Camaldolese hid Jews, others in Roman monastery
December 06, 2011
During World War II, the Camaldolese (O.S.B. Cam.) monastery of San Gregorio Magno al Celio in Rome hid Jews, anti-Fascist political figures, and "after Mussolini's capitulation, even a few trembling, formerly influential, figures of the Fascist regime," according to L'Osservatore Romano.
The monastery's chronicler wrote at the time:
Jews – who were being sought to be locked up in those death camps known as concentration camps and who were divested of all their possessions – asked to be hidden, as did politicians who did not wish to collaborate with the reborn Republican Fascism; men who had escaped from the prisons and jails that had been opened for them as political offenders on 26 July; officers who were loath to belong to an army that was betraying national and popular principles; soldiers who sought refuge to avoid being deported to distant places; soldiers of the Anglo-American forces, prisoners of war who had managed to flee in the moment of confusion, and there were even a few Austrian and Polish soldiers who belonged to the German army.
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