Jonathan Sacerdoti

gown his clothes and he shouted out papa which means dad because he thought it looked like his father who was a rabbi who wore similar clothes he was three he didn't understand and they got afraid because he's meant to be an orphan he's meant to be a catholic orphan in this orphanage those stories hearing a nun

an ancient nun tell me that exact story my father had told me from his memory really, you know, struck home.

So my father described his experience to me from the point of view of a five-year-old that he'd experienced what he did and didn't understand.

When his parents originally put him in a convent in Florence, they arranged for him with the local Catholic clergy who were helping to protect him and his brother and

He was told goodbye by his parents.

They didn't know if they would see him again.

And then two weeks after they were put in that convent, the fascists started to raid the convents.

And so he arranged for them to be moved to this orphanage in the countryside nearby where they were for nine months.

And they were all reunited after the war.

Thank God, my family, his parents and him and his brother died.

He told me of the hunger they experienced.

He told me of the experiences they had even in that convent when the Nazis tried to raid the convent.

The Mother Superior was a little lady.

She's the only one who knew that they were hiding Jews there.

And she went to the door with her crucifix and held it up to the SS who wanted to come in and said, here there are only children of God and you too are children of God.

And that's a story that I heard repeatedly.

from the nuns who I met as well about what happened.

These were extraordinary people.

And so what my father's story taught me, as well as the Holocaust stories that we all absorbed as Jews from the parts of our families who didn't survive, it's really important for me, actually, is my father nominated many of his saviors to be registered as righteous among the nations in Israel.

That's because in Israel, they have this place called Yad Vashem, which is the Holocaust archive and memorial center.