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SPORT WORLD NEWS Italian cyclist Bartali who saved 800 Jews during the World War II named Righteous Among the Nations

Gino Bartali. Photo by/firenze.repubblica.it

By Maria Pia Beltran, AIPS Young Reporter

TEL AVIV, September 24, 2013 - Gino Bartali, the great champion of cycling, has been declared one of the "Righteous Among the Nations" from Yad Vashem, the official memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This decision recognizes Bartali's actions to help 800 people persecuted in Italy during World War II. The Tuscan road cycling champion, born in Florence in 1914, was a devoted Catholic; during the German occupation in Italy between September 1943 and April 1945, Bartali was part of a lifesaving net whose leader had been the rabbi of Florence, Nathan Cassuto; and the archbishop of the cardinal city, Elia Angelo Dalla Costa, who has also already been recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations. According to Yad Vashem, this Jewish-Christian net, which was built after the German occupation and at the start of the deportation period "saved hundreds of local Jews and the Jewish sheltered by the territories under Italian control before, mainly in France and Yugoslavia." Bartali acted as messenger in the net, hiding false documents and papers in his bicycle and transporting them through the cities, using the excuse that he was training. Even with the knowledge of the risks to his own life involved by helping the Jewish, Bartali  transferred false documents to various contacts, among them Rabbi Cassuto. In honor of Bartali there will be a ceremony in Italy in the coming months.