GIORGIO PERLASCA was one of Europe's great unsung heroes. An Italian former Fascist and livestock agent who fought for Franco during the Spanish Civil War, Perlasca - posing as the Spanish charge d'affaires in Nazi-occupied Budapest in 1944-45 - saved at least 5,500 Jews from the gas chambers, constantly risking his life in doing so. Evidence is now emerging that he may have played a leading role in saving a further 60,000 people from a massacre planned by the Hungarian Nazis in the Budapest ghetto just before the Russians took over the city.

Tall, with penetrating blue eyes and closely cropped white hair, Perlasca still exuded in old age the charm and authority which allowed him to bully and cajole Budapest's Nazi establishment into helping him save 'his' Jews while posing as a completely bogus Spanish representative.

His story only became known in 1989 when he was tracked down in Padua by a group of Hungarian women related to people whom he had saved. Since then he has been honoured by Israel as one of the Righteous of the Nations, a rare honour given to those few non- Jews who risked everything to save Hitler's victims from the gas ovens. He also received the highest honours from Hungary, Sweden and Spain, whose king recently awarded him the Order of Isabella the Catholic.

Perlasca was born in the northern Italian town of Como in 1910 but was brought up and lived most of his life in and around Padua. He came from a family of civil servants, judges and army officers. He fell under the spell of Mussolini while still at school and volunteered to fight in Mussolini's Abyssinian war of conquest and later, as a Fascist volunteer, in the Spanish Civil War.

But by 1938 Perlasca was disillusioned with Mussolini. He detested Italy's alignment with Nazi Germany and abhorred the Italian race laws of 1936 against the Jews. Many of his friends, both in Padua and in the Italian army were, in fact, Jews.

At the outbreak of the Second World War Perlasca managed to avoid military service by working in a strategic job as a livestock agent supplying meat to the Italian armed services. In 1940 he was sent in this capacity to Zagreb and Belgrade, from where he travelled widely in Eastern Europe. Here he observed dreadful massacres of Jews, Serbs and other minorities.

In 1942 he was sent to work in Budapest, which he described as 'hedonistic and full of life, where nothing was lacking and the restaurants and theatres were full of seemingly carefree people, many of them Jews'. Perlasca, in great demand because of his Italian charm, threw himself into this life with shameless gusto.

But the good life in Budapest ended with the fall of Mussolini in July 1943. Perlasca was immediately interned as an enemy alien in a camp near the Austrian border from which he escaped (back to Budapest) on 13 October 1943, just three days before a Nazi- backed puppet government overthrew the right-wing leader Admiral Horthy, who had managed to keep at least some distance from his ally Hitler.

Knowing that he had the right to Spanish protection, as a former pro-Franco soldier, he went to the Spanish embassy where, within a day, he was given Spanish citizenship, and a new Christian name - Jorge. Outside the embassy he had noticed thousands of people milling around. He was told that they were Jews pleading for the so-called 'letters of protection' which Spain, together with other neutral governments, including Portugal, Switzerland, Sweden and the Vatican, was issuing to protect Jews from deportation to the Auschwitz gas chambers. The Spanish embassy officials said they were so understaffed that they could not cope with the problem.

Perlasca volunteered for the job and was accepted. He set to work, making essential contacts in various key Nazi ministries and bribing, blackmailing and charming officials and police into helping him, or at least turning a blind eye to his pro-Jewish activities.

In November 1944, with the Russians approaching Budapest, the last remaining Spanish diplomat fled the capital, leaving the embassy officially closed down. But the diplomat had forgotten to take the embassy seal with him and Perlasca set to work stamping documents which proved not only that the Spanish Embassy was still open and functioning, but that he was the last remaining charge d'affaires.

Perlasca also used the seal to issue thousands more letters of protection to Hungarian Jews whom he housed in eight rented apartment houses which he made sure flew the Spanish flag and therefore, Perlasca argued, enjoyed diplomatic protection. The bluff worked, although he had to patrol the houses night and day to make sure that roving bands of Hungarian Nazis did not break in and murder or kidnap the protected people.

This happened only once, when 300 people under Spanish protection were carted off to the Budapest goods yards for deportation to Auschwitz. And it was here, in the presence of the heroic Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, that Perlasca's life was saved by Adolf Eichmann during a violent row with an SS officer over two young Jewish children whom Perlasca insisted on taking away in the Spanish diplomatic car.

'A young SS major pulled out his pistol, pointing it at me. Wallenberg, who was standing nearby, shouted that he could not treat a Spanish diplomatic representative like this. Then, at a certain moment, an SS lieutenant- colonel arrived and asked what was happening. He listened, then ordered the major coldly to do nothing more because, 'Sooner or later', he said, 'we'll get the children anyway.' They went away and it was then that Wallenberg told me that the SS colonel was the notorious Adolf Eichmann.'

The stories of the Holocaust Saviors had two important things in common. They all resisted to get into the terror band, by risking what they were and had. None, in any way, was exempted from the high price that the noblest actions carry in certain periods.

What was really passionate of this stories of solidarity and courage is to find and know the paths that each of these heroes followed and the details of each deed.

Let us take the case of Giorgio Perlasca ( Como , 1910), Spanish “Consul” to Budapest between December 1944 and January 1945.

Loyal to his condition of sympathizer of Gabriele D’ Annnzio’s nationalistic ideas, he offered as a volunteer to fight on Francisco Franco’s side on the Spanish Civil War. At the end of the conflict he came back to Italy where he was caught by the beginning of the Second World War and the alliance between Mussolini and Hitler. That was the moment when Perlasca leaves fascism and decides to stay loyal only to King Victor Emmanuel III . The old resentment towards Germany , country against which Italy had fought during the First World War and 1935 German racial laws set a limit to an exacerbated patriotism. “I was not fascist or anti-fascist; I was anti Nazi”, he would say some time later.

The 1943 autumn surprises him as official delegate of the Italian government with diplomatic status. He had been sent to the Eastern Europe countries with the mission of buying meat for the Italian army. On October 8, the American general Dwight Eisenhower announces the unconditional surrender of Italy to the allied forces. Then, Perlasca makes public his oath to the Italian monarch that costs him his freedom. The Hungarian government, threatened by Germany , takes him as prisoner and confines him in a castle reserved for diplomats. After a few months he took advantage of a medical pass that allowed him to travel within Bulgaria to get away and request political asylum at the Spanish Embassy, the country of his juvenile adventures. Suddenly Giorgio became “Jorge” with the same rights than a Spanish citizen.

At short he started to collaborate with the rescue actions of Jews that carried out Angel Sanz Briz, the consul in charge of the legation, in close collaboration with other diplomatic legations such as Switzerland , Sweden , Portugal and the Vatican .

When Sanz Briz was forced to leave Hungary at the end of 1944 not to recognize the new pro-Nazi government of Ferenc Szalasi, the authorities had the chance to advance over the Spanish houses of protection. Immediately, and to avoid the worst, Perlasca made the Ministry of the Interior believe that Sanz Briz had appointed his successor.

He appointed himself as Spanish Ambassador and on a piece of paper with official letterhead he wrote his designation as representative of Franco’s government. He gave this document to the authorities of the Hungarian State Department and they took it as legal. Immediately after, he put under his custody thousands of refugees hidden in Spanish houses and, like Raoul Wallenberg, he negotiated with the Nazi bloodhounds to lower the greatest amount of people condemned to death in the extermination camps.

… ” The relatives of the Spanish people in Hungary request your presence in Spain . Until communications are reestablished and the journey is possible, you will stay here under the protection of the Spanish government,” said the letters of protection based on a 1924 law by which Spanish citizenship was given to all Sephardi Jews.

With the Red Army in Budapest and the certainty that about 5,200 Jews were safe, Perlasca initiated a long return to Italy .

“Jorge” kept in secret his incredible adventure for more than 30 years, until a group of women of the Jewish community in Hungary started to track the Spanish diplomat who had saved their lives.

Before he died on August 15, 1992 in Padova, where he had gown up, Perlasca gave his valuable testimony to the memory of the nations.

Thanks to the film “Perlasca, an Italian Hero”, and to the books such as the one belonging to the journalist Enrico Deaglio, “La Banalita del Bene. Storia di Giorgio Perlasca”, the world knows today the story of this Holocaust savior.

* Baruch Tenembaum is Founder of The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation

"He was a stranger in a strange country . . . He could have let the whole thing pass him by without taking risks, and like the rest of the world stood idly by. He chose not to do that," said Miles Lerman, United States Holocaust Council.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/giorgio-perlasca#ixzz2auHNYlrQ

Giorgio Perlasca was born on January 31st, 1910, in Como, northern Italy. Raised in a Catholic family, he and his five siblings were taught to believe that all men are "more or less" equal, noted a Washington Post article.

In the 1920s, Perlasca, like many other young Italians, was swept up in Mussolini's fascist movement. He volunteered to serve in the Italian army in the 1930s in two campaigns, noted Mordecai Paldiel in his book Saving the Jews: Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in the Abyssinian war of 1935-1936, and the Spanish Civil War, fighting for fascist leader Francisco Franco, in 1936-1937.

Broke with Fascist Party

When he returned to Italy, however, he no longer supported fascism after learning of his country's alliance with Germany, which Italy had fought just 20 years earlier. He was also openly opposed to the 1938 anti-Semitic racial laws. Many of Perlasca's friends were Jewish and he became increasingly horrified and outraged by the Nazis' campaign of brutality against Jews. It was this new, virulent wave of Fascism sweeping through Europe that caused Perlasca to break with the Fascist party.

Life Took Unexpected Turn

By 1940, Perlasca was working for a meat-importing business in Italy. He was sent to eastern Europe to buy meat for the Italian army about the time World War II broke out. Perlasca was in Budapest in September, 1943, when Italy signed an armistice with the alliance. German forces in Hungary ordered all Italians to return home, but, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous website noted, "Perlasca refused to go to a German-ruled Italian puppet state. As Perlasca said, 'I was neither a fascist nor an anti-fascist, but I was anti-Nazi."'

Perlasca was interned, although well-treated in a facility reserved for diplomats. He managed to escape and took refuge at the Spanish Embassy, presenting a certificate he had received at the end of the Spanish Civil War as a token of gratitude, which promised Spain's protection should he ever need it. Eventually, Angel Sanz-Briz, the ambassador whom Perlasca had befriended, issued him a Spanish passport, changing his name to the Spanish variation, Jorge Perlasca, and granted him citizenship.

In October, 1944, the Germans removed Hungary's ruler, Admiral Horthy, and installed the pro-Nazi Arrow Cross leader, Ferencz Szálasi, a fanatical anti-Semite. A "reign of terror was unleashed on the streets of Budapest against the city's Jews," commented Saving the Jews, which noted that 440,000 Jews from Hungary's provinces had already been deported to Auschwitz. The remaining 200,000 Jews, living in Budapest, now feared for their lives.

"A Truly Magnificent Impostor"

The Spanish consul had been working to save as many Jews as possible. Perlasca decided to help Sanz-Briz and his small staff. As noted in Contemporary Heros and Heroines, "Together, they worked to extend Spanish legal protection to Jews and met with officials to thwart deportation efforts. The situation in Budapest grew more dangerous as Soviet troops approached, and in November 1944 Sanz-Briz fled the country. Rather than abandon his rescue efforts, Perlasca decided to pose as the new Spanish ambassador."

He issued safe-conduct passes, using the Rivera law passed in 1924, which, according to the Perlasca website, ". . . recognised Spanish citizenship to all Jews with 'sefardita' ancestry (of old Spanish origin, driven away hundreds of years ago by Queen Isabella la Cattolica)." Perlasca gave these passes to all Jews, Sephardic or not.

Contemporary Heros and Heroines commented on Perlasca's success: "Thanks in part to his distinguished appearance and fluency in Spanish, he proved to be a convincing diplomat when negotiating with Hungarian and German officials. During one meeting, he convinced the Minister of Internal Affairs that the Spanish government would retaliate against Hungarian citizens living in Spain if the minister didn't allow Jews to remain under Spanish protection."

Over the next two months, a Commonweal article noted, Perlasca and a small group of collaborators from the [Spanish] embassy staff handed out, ". . . thousands of false documents, setting up and defending eight 'safe houses' under Spanish jurisdiction, finding food and medicine on the black market . . . Through it all, Perlasca showed himself to be an ingenious organizer, a convincing 'diplomat,' and a truly magnificent impostor."

True Heroism

One of Perlasca's most vivid memories was the time he was standing by the loading dock, watching German soldiers and Hungarian police push long lines of men, women, and children toward freight cars waiting to deliver them to the death camps. As described by Commonweal, "Suddenly [Perlasca] rushes forward, grabs two young boys by the collar, drags them back down the platform, and throws them into the back seat of his car." At that point, a German soldier ran over, pulled out his revolver, and motioned to the man to return the boys. Perlasca refused, shouting. "'This car is foreign territory. The boys are under Spanish jurisdiction and you'll be violating international law if you so much as touch them.' The two men begin to scuffle," Commonweal continued, "and a German lieutenant colonel comes over to investigate. He tells the soldier to leave the man and the boys alone. 'Go ahead and take them,' he says to [Perlasca] . . . 'Their time will come."'

Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during the war, had been watching this dispute. He walked up to Perlasca and told him the colonel was none other than Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the "Final Solution" and responsible for the murder of millions of Jews in the death camps of Europe during the war.

Budapest was now caught up in "a desperate tug of war," noted a U.S. News & World Report article, "with Eichmann on one end and Perlasca and the diplomatic representatives of four other neutral states - Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Vatican - on the other. '[Wallenberg] and I would go to the train station and bluff until we got Jews away by claiming they were our nationals,"' recalled Perlasca.

The city collapsed into chaos as the Soviet army advanced. Saving the Jews noted that groups of the Arrow Cross militia, frustrated and angered by the Russian shelling of their city, "wildly roamed the streets . . . [exacting] vengeance on countless Jews, whom they indiscriminately shot and dumped their bodies in the Danube river."

The Washington Post recounted an incident that took place in December, 1944. One morning, following a night filled with screaming and gunfire, a young survivor was handed over to Perlasca's care - "a Jewish girl naked except for an army overcoat." She told him that the Nazis had tied the Jews together, in pairs, with barbed wire, and forced them to walk naked through the snow from the ghetto to the Danube. The German soldiers made the Jews kneel at the edge of the river and began to shoot them. By chance, the barbed wire tying the girl to her sister had come loose. Realizing they had a chance to escape, the sisters agreed that they would fall into the river when the first shots rang out. "Somehow, [one sister] swam to a bridge, climbed out, and hid under a tree, where she was found by a member of the Hungarian military, who covered her and handed her over to Perlasca, a known protector of Jews."

In Saving the Jews, one Jewish survivor, Edith Weiss, recalled Perlasca's amazing influence and presence. As Weiss' group was being led to the Danube, ". . . suddenly Perlasca appeared on the scene. 'He was mesmerizing. In this forceful, powerful way of his, he told them to go away and leave us alone . . . Perlasca had such authority, he was so strong, that there was no way anyone could contradict him. They simply went away."'

In January, 1945, as Perlasca was making his final rounds to the safe-houses, the Toronto Star reported that he told the Jews, "The Russians are in the city. You don't have to be afraid. You don't need me any more."

In April, as Perlasca was preparing to leave Hungary for the long journey back to Italy, noted the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous website, he was handed a letter from Dr. Hugo Dukesz, one of the Jews saved by Perlasca, who wrote, "On this occasion we want to express the affection and gratitude of the several thousand Jews who survived, thanks to your protection. There are not enough words to praise the tenderness with which you fed us and with which you cared for the old and the sick among us. You encouraged us when we were close to despair, and your name will never be omitted from our prayers. May the Almighty grant you your reward."

Discovered a Righteous Man

When Perlasca returned home, he found that few people were interested in his experiences; no one believed his stories. Like most European nations, Italy did not want to acknowledge or be reminded of its responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. For the next 43 years, Perlasca's heroic exploits went unheard, and they - and he - were forgotten.

Then in 1987, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Museum in Jerusalem, received a letter from Dr. Eveline Blitstein Willinger, a woman living in Berlin. She and a group of Jewish survivors had located the now 79-year-old man living with his wife in an apartment in Padua, Italy. As noted in Saving the Jews, she wrote, "To my astonishment, nobody knows his name, nobody thanks him for what he did . . . We are asking you to honor this great man with a noble soul, before it's too late."

Honors and Tributes

Once Giorgio Perlasca's story came to light, people from all corners of the world were speaking his name. Between 1989 and 1992, heads of state, associations, and citizens from several countries honored Perlasca for his courageous and selfless work, for the 5,000 lives he saved - and their children and grandchildren.

In 1989, Israel awarded Perlasca an honorary citizenship, and Yad Vashem presented him with the Righteous Among the Nations of the World award. According to the Giorgio Perlasca website, the Jerusalem museum defines "the righteous" as those men and women "who have identified evil and have risked their own lives to save others threatened by a totalitarian, political, social or religious project."

That same year, Hungary awarded Perlasca the Star of Merit, its highest honor. In 1990, Perlasca attended a ceremony in Washington, D.C., to receive the Medal of Remembrance, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council's highest honor. Perlasca also received distinctive awards from Italy and Spain.

The early 1990s saw the emergence of books, films, and newspaper and magazine articles that paid tribute to Perlasca. Enrico Deaglio wrote about Perlasca's activities in La Banalità del bene (The Banality of Goodness, translated into English by Gregory Conti). Mordecai Paldiel included a chapter on Perlasca in Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the "Final Solution." Perlasca told his own story in his memoirs, L'Impostore (The Impostor). Many people learned about Perlasca's exploits from the Italian film, Perlasca - an Italian Hero, and a four-hour French documentary, Tzedek (Righteousness).

During these years, Perlasca was asked the same question, over and over - why did he risk his life to save Jews in another country? A modest man, he always replied that he didn't think he was a hero and would explain, "Because I couldn't stand the sight of people being branded like animals . . . I couldn't stand seeing children being killed. I did what I had to do ...AsfarasIwas concerned, I was sure of the rightness of what I was doing."

Perlasca died on August 15, 1992, at his home in Padua, Italy

Books

Contemporary Heros and Heroines, Book VI, Gale Group, 2000.

Paldiel, Mordecai, Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the "Final Solution," Schreiber Publishing, 2000.

Periodicals

Commonweal, December 3, 1999.

Toronto Star, April 10, 2004.

U.S. News & World Report, March 21, 1994.

Washington Post, September 6, 1990.

Online

Georgio Perlasca website, http://www.giorgioperlasca.it/inglese/intro.html (December 24, 2004).

"Giorgio Perlasca," Jewish Foundation for the Righteous website, http://www.jfr.org/content/default.asp?artid=15 (December 25, 2004).

Luca Zingaretti (born November 11, 1961) is an Italian actor, known for playing Salvo Montalbano in Il commissario Montalbano mystery series based on the character and novels created by Andrea Camilleri. Zingaretti is a native of Rome. He is the older brother of politician Nicola Zingaretti.

Career

Zingaretti studied at the prestigious National Academy of Dramatic Art Silvio D' Amico, graduating in 1984, and began his acting career in the theatre, often working with director Luca Ronconi, appearing in such diverse plays as Chekhov's Three Sisters, Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, and Martin Sherman's Bent.

However, stardom arrived with his leading role as Commissario Salvo Montalbano, in a series of TV films, initially shown on RAI Two, and then RAI One, as well as many other European TV channels and SBS in Australia. The series, which ran from 1999 to 2011, consisted of 22 films.

After his success he became one of the most in-demand dramatic actors in Italy appearing in such films as:

Prima dammi un bacio ("First Give Me a Kiss") (2003), dir. Ambrogio Lo Giudice
I giorni dell'abbandono ("Days of Abandonment") (2005), dir. Roberto Faenza
Tutte le donne della mia vita ("All The Women Of My Life") (2007), dir. Simona Izzo

On TV he appeared in :

Perlasca, un eroe italiano ("Perlasca : An Italian Hero") (2002)
Doppio agguato ("Double Ambush") (2003)
Cefalonia ("Kefalonia") (2005)
Alla luce del sole (To The Sunlight") (2005), a film on the life of Don Pino Puglisi.

In 2008 he appeared in four new Montalbano films, and in the same period adapted and directed the play La Sirena, from a story by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.

In 2009 he continued to appear in the theatre and also worked on the film Noi credevamo, directed by Mario Martone, and set during the reunification of Italy in which he played Francesco Crispi. He also appeared in the film Il figlio più piccolo ("The Younger Son"), directed by Pupi Avati and co-starring Christian De Sica.

In 2010 four new Montalbano episodes were produced, broadcast by RAI One 14 March 2011 and the three following Mondays.