|
Giovanni Palatucci (May 31, 1909 – February 10, 1945) was an Italian police official who was long believed to have saved thousands of Jews in Fiume between 1939 and 1944 (current Rijeka in Croatia) from being deported to Nazi extermination camps. In 2013 a research panel of historians led by the ''Centro Primo Levi'' reviewed almost 700 documents and concluded that Palatucci had followed RSI and German orders concerning the Jews and enabling the deportation of the majority of the 570 Jews living in Fiume and surrounding areas, 412 of whom were deported to Auschwitz, a higher percentage than in any Italian city.〔Patricia Cohen, (He acted like a German to trick them and halp save the Jews. An Italian Saint in the Making or a Collaborator With Nazis ), The New York Times, 19 June 2013〕 The matter is currently the topic of scholarly debate. A national commission of historians recommended by the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities, the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation in Milan, the Italian Ministry of the Interior and the Centro Primo Levi NY is conducting a comprehensive review of the documents. ==Biography== Palatucci was born in Montella, Avellino, Italy. He graduated from the University of Turin, Faculty of Law in 1932. In 1936 he entered police service in Genoa and the following year he was assigned to Fiume. For 5 decades, Palatucci was believed to have been Fiume Chief of Police, and that he used his power to help the Jews. Even though already in 1994, historian Marco Coslovich published the documents showing that Palatucci never had more than a subordinate administrative role, in which he excelled and for which he was praised by his superiors, the misrepresentation of his position continued until the 2013, when the Holocaust Museum stated in its anniversary exhibition that Palatucci "used his power of Chief of Police to help the Jews". Palatucci, known as “the Italian Schindler,” has long been credited with saving thousands of Jews during the Holocaust while serving in the police department in the city of Fiume, and was designated by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. After the promulgation of racial laws against Jews in 1938 and at the beginning of World War II in 1940, Palatucci was chief of the Foreigners' Office. According to his hagiographers, he began falsifying documents and visas. The documentary report issued by Centro Primo Levi NY in 2013 demonstrates that no evidence nor testimony of such activity was ever found. Moreover, the report reviews in depth hundreds of police records preserved at the State Archive of Rijeka showing that one of Palatucci's main activities between 1938 and 1943 was the compilation and update of the census of the Jews. The census was the principal instrument in the application of the Racial Laws and in Fiume it was compiled and maintained with unparalleled thoroughness. Hagiographers also claim that when Palatucci "officially deported" Jews, he instead arranged for them to be sent to Campagna, telling them to contact his uncle, the Catholic Bishop of Campagna Giuseppe Maria Palatucci, who would offer them the greatest assistance possible.〔Tenembaum, Baruch. ("Giovanni Palatucci, an Italian hero in the Holocaust" ), The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.〕 Already Marco Coslovich in 1994 had demonstrated through extensive documentation that Palatucci and the Police of Fiume had no power to decide internment location for the Jews. More recently the database of foreign Jews interned in Italy curated by Anna Pizzuti provided unequivocal evidence of the implausibility of this theory. As published in Pizzuti's documentary resource, the Jews deported from Fiume to Campagna are 40. Moreover, 10 of this allegedly "protected group" ended up in Auschwitz. Hagiographers also claim that he managed to destroy all documented records of some 10,000 Jewish refugees living in the town, issuing them false papers and providing them with funds.. This theory has been questioned by several historians, including Marco Coslovich and Silva Bon. The latter, in her "The Jewish Communities of Fiume and the Carnaro" (Trieste, 2001) argued that, based on official records, the Germans and the RSI police conducted the arrests of the Jews through the lists of the Italian police. The arrests began in October 1943 and were organized first as round-ups and then as targeted operations in which the Italian Questura provided information to both locate and identify Fiume Jews. Both German and Italian records indicate that by June 1944 hardly any Jews had remained in Fiume. Moreover, if local records had been destroyed, something of which there is no sign, those refugees would still appear in the central police archive that kept copies of all local police headquarters as well as in the records of the Italian DP camps after the war, which is not the case. Following the 1943 capitulation of Italy, Fiume was occupied by Nazis. Purportedly, he continued to clandestinely help Jews and maintain contact with the Resistance, until his activities were discovered by the Gestapo. However, both German and Italian documents show that Palatucci was arrested for treason and for having transmitted to Britain official documents requesting negotiations for Fiume’s post-war status under Italian aegis.〔Alessandra Farkas, (Shadows cast on the heroism of ‘Italian Schindler’ ), The Times of Israel, June 14, 2013〕 As the imminent defeat of the Axis became clear, many RSI officers began to negotiate with the Allies Italy's post war fate and their own. The tensions between the German and Italian RSI forces grew harsher. On the Eastern border, near Fiume, British support of Yugoslav resistance fighters grew stronger causing continuous attacks. Palatucci highest superior, to whom he reported, Tullio Tamburini was arrested in June for treason and embezzlement and deported to Dachau. After the liberation of Florence, in August 1944, Roberto Tomasselli, his direct superior and protector who had left him in his place, defected the ranks of Salò and ended up in an Anglo-American POW camp. His chief of cabinet and close collaborator in Fiume, left for Milan, where he served briefly Mussolini ailing administration and passed to the Liberation forces before the Allies entered the city. On September 13, 1944, Palatucci was arrested. Oral sources claim that he was condemned to death, but no documentary evidence of this fact ever emerged. Along with other Italian policemen from Fiume and Trieste who were also accused of treason and embezzlement, he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died during the epidemics of typhus on February 9, 1945, before the camp was liberated by the Allies on April 29, 1945. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial honored him in 1990 as Righteous Among the Nations, for helping one Jewish woman. The Institute of the Righteous commission in 1990 found no evidence that he might have assisted anyone outside of this case.〔 In October 2002, the Pope's vicar in Rome opened a beatification case for Palatucci,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Giovanni Palatucci, an Italian policeman on the road of beatification )〕 but in June 2013 the Vatican announced that it had asked a historian to review the new findings.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Giovanni Palatucci」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|