In silence, and with no desire for publicity, Jews all over Italy are sending help to earthquake stricken towns in southern Italy. So far, 38 tons of new clothes, box loads of food, and a thousand heavy blankets bought by the Rome Jewish community were sent ahead on three trucks and delivered at the Nocera Inferior and another distribution center.
Five trailers were contributed; three by the Rome community, one by the Naples Jewish community, and one by HIAS, with money collected entirely among its staff in Rome.
The Jewish population of Rome which totals about 16,000,including children, managed to collect about 18 million Line at donation centers set up in the Jewish schools and other institutions in the city.
Individual Roman Jewish shop owners donated wholesale quantities of badly needed clothing and undergarments with heartfelt generosity. Other badly needed items, such as heaters for tents and trailers, were bought with cash donations. The major Jewish organizations with offices in Rome (HIAS, JDC, ORT and the Jewish Agency) contributed $100,000 of which $30,000 come from the JDC alone. Staff members of all these Jewish organizations contributed on average of two days salary each.
HELP FROM SOVIET JEWISH REFUGEES
Perhaps most moving of all were the offers of help that come from Soviet Jewish refugees in transit in Rome — those bedraggled families awaiting passports to continue their emigration to the U.S., Canada and Australia.
Physicians among the Soviet Jews here offered medical aid to the victims while others offered to go to the stricken towns and help dig among the ruins in the hopes of saving lives. But they received no reply from the Italian government. Many among the Soviet Jewish colony have already donated blood.
Last week a truck, pocked with clothes and food bought with money donated by Roman Jews, left the capital to meet with the trailer departing from the Naples Jewish community. They headed for the tiny mountain town of Calitri, south of Naples. The town was selected because the president of the Naples Jewish community has friends there to ensure that the gifts. arrived at their destination without being hijacked by road bandits.
SOLIDARITY WITHOUT FANFARE
These spontaneous, concrete acts of solidarity on the part of Italian Jews with the earthquake victims are being carried out quietly, one might almost say “clandestinely” and anonymously. When I asked members of the staff of the Rome Jewish community and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities why no news items were being printed about Italian Jewish contributions, I was told, “It’s not important that others know, what’s important is that we act. It’s Chanukah time. Let’s say these are our special mitzvot for Chanukah.”
But another, more bitter truth surfaced. Choosing the way of silence was deliberate on the port of Italian Jewry, based on post experience. Apparently, immediately after the 1976 earthquake in the Friuli region, in which 1000 people died, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities sent a sum of 15 million Lire.
Thereupon, a flood of angry letters descended on the Union’s office in Rome, all to the effect that the sum contributed was considered a “miserly” amount in consideration of the fact that Italian Jews were amongst “the wealthiest people in the nation.”
MISINFORMATION ABOUT JEWISH COMMUNITY
“There is so much misinformation circulating about us,” said one Jewish community director. “In recent surveys we discovered that the average Italian thinks the Jews in Italy number up to two or three million when in reality we amount to a total population of 35,000, about half that number in Rome and the rest scattered in Milan, Turin, Naples and smaller towns. The Italian people really think we control’ large sections of Italy’s finances. They don’t know how we have to struggle to keep our community budgets from falling into a permanent state of deficit,” the community director said.
The “image” problem of Jews all over the world has always been and always will be a concern for Jewish public relations, at least so long as anti-Semitism continues to exist as a human disease. Teachers in Roman Jewish schools can often be heard admonishing their pupils to always be on their best behavior in public because they represent the future of Roman Jewish. But it is ironic to discover that the “reputation” of Italian Jewry can be adversely affected by good deeds as well.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
