Reflections of a stormy petrel

Romeo Priotto, a former railwayman who had been in pension for one year, was having his holiday in Porto Tolle, at the mouth of the river Po in northern Italy. Suddenly he spotted two little children in serious difficulty. He threw himself in, saved both the youngsters - and then fell dead, killed by a heart attack brought upon by the exertion.

The highest decoration in the ancient Roman army was the crown of oak leaves, reserved for a soldier who had saved a Roman citizen's life. This man deserves it. Rest in peace.

...I have received compliments from one or two of my friends that I am not really willing to accept. Not that I am not grateful. But, you know, I have met REAL heroes - at least one or two of them - and I have read about them. I know what they act like. I know that I am nowhere even close to being like them. I know of a woman who is so upright that people give her their savings for safekeeping. I know a man who spent sixty years working away at an obscure branch of knowledge without reward or recognition. I have just heard of a man who calmly went to his death rather than obey a criminal government. Look, folks, don't even think of comparing me with such. They don't deserve the insult, nor I the compliment.

The most dramatic part of World War Two as far as Italy was concerned began in September 8, 1943, when the Nazis, no longer as overbearing supposed allies, but as open enemies, invaded most of the country. One of the items on their agenda was to put an end to the culpably lax attitudes of most Italians to the Jewish problem. They wanted to destroy every Jew in Italy, and set about the work with gusto.

On direct orders from the Pope, every resource of the Catholic Church was made available to hide and disguise Jews and other prospective Nazi victims. The Vatican itself became overcrowded, as were dozens of cathedral closes and hundreds of churches, church schools and monasteries. Cloistered nuns were released from their vows to attend to necessary secret business. The Pope issued the Swiss Guard with machine guns and ordered them to use them if necessary. Everywhere, priests and trusted laymen worked overtime to produce false identity certificates and smuggle dangerous persons from farmhouse to monastery and from monastery to hotel.

One of the most astounding of the many episodes in this epic has only just come to light. The Church recruited one of her most famous lay faithful, the cycling champion Gino Bartali (Tour de France winner, 1938, 1948) and sent him on an impossible mission - cycling from Florence to Assisi and back in one day, to bring to Florence the false documents secretly printed in the town of St.Francis by a local printing-shop owner. The man who discovered the story, history graduate Paolo Alberati, was himself a professional cyclist who competed six times in the Giro d'Italia (1995-2000); but when he tried to match Bartali's exploit, in spite of having a bike half the weight (seven kilos against Bartali's fourteen), better roads and no Nazi patrols to dodge, he could not do it; he broke down half-way back. Bartali did this forty times between 1943 and 1944: forty world-class performances in the most appalling circumstances, more riding than a professional would ordinarily do for prizes, risking his life. He was never caught. And that in spite of the fact that he had been in the black books of the Fascist secret police (quite literally: he was Suspicious Person no.576) for at least five years. They did not like the fact that he openly and continuously refused to dedicate his victories to Mussolini, preferring to offer them up to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Bartali kept the secret to his grave, and for a long time even his wife and son knew nothing about it. His wife actually could not believe that the cloistered Poor Clare nuns of San Quirico, Assisi, knew her husband, but she went there and they answered - of course, madam, how could anyone be possibly mistaken about a man whose face had been in every newspaper in Europe? When his family asked, his answer was typical: "There's things you just do and don't brag about. I'm no hero, me. I just did the one thing I knew how to do - ride my bicycle."

The mission was sanctioned from the highest quarters. The man Bartali met at five o'clock in the morning of the first of his great rides was the private secretary of Cardinal Dalla Costa, Archbishop of Florence.

Tell this to the next moron you meet who dares open mouth about "Hitler's Pope" or the like.

There is no eulogy in the English language more radiant than the one that the journalist Bernard Levin wrote in 1976 for the Russian writer Alexander Solghenitsin after meeting him during a BBC interview. And until yesterday, Levin’s passionate and obviously sincere account of the great writer was the main reason I had to admire the man.

As a historian, I feel that I know quite enough of the monsters who polluted the twentieth century. I tend to avoid eyewitness accounts of the crimes of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and less famous fiends such as King Leopold II (whose hideous rule in the Congo may well surpass Hitler and Stalin’s worst excesses, and for far meaner motives) or Plutarco Calles of Mexico. When I read statistics that speak of millions of dead, or describe a permanent shortage of males in the Russian population through fifty years of Soviet governance, I do not feel the need to recreate the experience of those victims. I already know what to think; and at any rate, I have seen and read enough not to want to see or read any more.

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