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    It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust
    Unavailable
    It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust
    Unavailable
    It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust
    Ebook403 pages5 hours

    It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust

    By Elizabeth Bettina

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

     

     IMAGINE ELIZABETH BETTINA’S SURPRISE when she discovered that her grandmother’s village had a secret: over a half century ago, many of Campagna’s residents defied the Nazis and risked their lives to shelter and save hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust. What followed her discovery became an adventure as she uncovered fascinating untold stories of Jews in Italy during World War II and the many Italians who risked everything to save them.

     “Finally, somebody made known the courage and the empathy of the majority of the Italian people toward us Jews at a time of great danger.” —Nino Asocoli

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateJan 3, 2011
    ISBN9781418554941
    Unavailable
    It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust

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    Reviews for It Happened in Italy

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    • 3/5
      Bettina was born in the USA of parents who migrated from Italy. In the summer she visited her grandmother in the Italian village of Campagna. Later she lived in Italy herself. She accidentally learned that that village had hidden Jews from the Germans during WW II but no one seemed to know about it. Her grandmother never mentioned it and when she asked people she knew about it, they too denied it had happened.This book is the story of her search for the real story and when she found people who had been saved by Italians she collected and recorded their stories. She enlisted the assistance of the Catholic Church right up to meeting the Pope to recognize what the Italian people had done to save and protect 1000's of Jews from the German death camps.She also wished to record before it was lost, the evidence that Italian internment camps were nothing like German concentration camps. Jews could marry, practice their religion and work under the table even though they were technically detained. Even police officers protected them by warning them of an impending raid by the German soldiers. This is a fascinating story that is well worth studying for it is part of the Holocaust history that is not well known.
    • 3/5
      The book It Happened In Italy presents us with a wonderful and untold WWII story: the story of the Jews who survived, and actually didn't have that bad of a time, thanks to Italian Catholics who helped them hide and escape from the clutches of the Nazis.The problem with this book is that it doesn't really tell this story.Oh, we do get personal stories of survivors, and the clear difference between being in a camp in Italy and a camp anywhere else in Europe. (Many survivors said that living in a prison camp in Italy was like being in "a hotel"). As I said, it's a wonderful, upbeat story of WWII -- and a story we haven't heard before, which is a shame.However, this book is mainly about the author, Elizabeth Bettina, and her experiences after she dug up this story and helped a few of the survivors go back to Italy to visit the people who helped them survive. And that's the problem with this book! It's only partly about those incidents during WWII. It's mostly about Elizabeth Bettina and the coincidences she encountered and good times she had.When a book pertains to be about an incident during WWII, it should be about that, and not about someone finding out about that. I felt that instead of being titled It Happened in Italy, it should have been titled, "My Adventures In And Around What Happened In Italy." (Less succinct, but more precise.) In fact, this has been a problem with a number of recent non-fiction books I've read lately; they didn't need to be in first person, and in fact could have benefited by not being in first-person. She comes off as just a touch self-congratulatory. And because the book focuses on her, and she's presumably going to go on locating and helping survivors, it doesn't really have a big finish -- it just ends.However, as I said, the book does make some good points and presents us with formerly untold stories; something any WWII buff would be interested to find out about. It IS important that these stories get told. I simply wish they had been told on their own.
    • 5/5
      The book tells us the Holocaust story through a completely different view of the conventional history about Jews. We are used to read or hear about the Nazi fields in Germany then we are challenged to a really opposite reality. Jews in Italy are treated in a complete special way, far from stripped pajamas as prisoners and from the mistreats and punishment received in Holocaust. The author takes a familiar story and from point establishes a much more profound investigation about the Second World War survivors. Through interviews and researched documents a portrayal of an unexpected atmosphere of one of the most important events of the first half of last century is presented.The text language is extremely accessible, with a nice presentation in and out of the book. The book, for introducing us new analysis of a history event established in a canonic view for historians, appears as a riveting, important source as well as theoretical foundation for present or future researches about the analyzed theme. So much the better because it is essentially constituted of veridical material. Photographs are another important resource used to recreate in fragments a piece of our history and taking us to the event portrayed in the book, where feelings and emotions in the survivors’ faces tell us more than words. I thank Thomas Nelson Publishers for the opportunity of reading this book as well as Elizabeth Bettina for the excellent book and research.