As part of the continuing events held in Barga this week for the Giornata della Memoria — The Day of Memory, held each year on the 27th January — the day the Allied Forces liberated Auschwitz, a packed Palazzo Pancrazi heard an incredible story of how more than 800 jews were saved from the concentration camps by the efforts of one of Italy’s most famous sportmen from that era. — the two-time Tour de France winner, Gino Bartali.
Bartali used his fame to carry messages and documents to the Italian Resistance. Bartali cycled from Florence through Tuscany, Umbria, and Marche, sometimes travelling as far afield as Rome, all the while wearing the racing jersey emblazoned with his name. Neither the Fascist police nor the German troops risked discontent by arresting him.
Giorgio Nissim, a Jewish accountant from Pisa, was a member of DELASEM, founded by the Union of the Israelitic Communities to help Jewish Italians escape persecution. The network in Tuscany was discovered in autumn 1943 and all members except Nissim sent to concentration camps. He met Pope Pius XII and, with the help of the Archbishop of Genoa, the Franciscan Friars and others he reorganized DELASEM and helped 800 escape.
Nissim died in 2000. His sons found from his diaries that Bartali had used his fame to help. Nissim and the Oblati Friars of Lucca forged documents and needed photographs of those they were helping. Bartali used to leave Florence in the morning, pretending to train, rode to a convent in which the Jews were hiding, collected their photographs and rode back to Nissim. Bartali used his position to learn about raids on safehouses.
Bartali was eventually taken to Villa Triste in Florence. The SD and the Italian RSS office, Mario Carità questioned Bartali, threatening his life. Bartali simply answered “I do what I feel [in my heart]“.
Bartali continued with the Assisi Underground. In 1943, he led Jewish refugees towards the Swiss Alps himself. He cycled pulling a wagon with a secret compartment, telling patrols it was just part of his training. Bartali told his son Andrea only that “One does these things and then that’s that”.
Andrea and his sister Bianca Maria were then present, along with three other great cyclists of that era, Mauro Gianneschi, Giovanni Corrieri and Renzo Soldani, at the unveiling of the new road in Barga Giardino named after Gino Bartali.
I have never seen a sports hero so adored. I remember times when Gino could not get out of a hotel even, such was the crush of fans waiting to see him. All the time there would be the roar of shouts which he knew so well, which was really music in his ears: ‘ Gi-no, Gi-no, Gi-no… ‘ During the Tour of Italy, Bartali always needed a box of wax balls to stop his ears when he was in bed. Without them there would have been no peace; For right through the night the row kept on, under the window of his room. – René de Latour,