Special medals and certificates, hailing a Catholic priest and an Italian physician as “righteous of the nation, ” were awarded to two men here today at a ceremony conducted by the Jewish community of Modena, honoring the men for especially valorous work in saving the lives of more than 100 Jewish children during World War II.
The awards were made to Don Arrigo Beccare, a priest, and Dr. Giuseppe Moreali, by Yad Vashem, the documentation center of the holocaust at Jerusalem, which was represented at the ceremonies by one of the youths these men helped save, Josef Itai, of Israel.
During the war, Itai and more than 100 other Jewish boys and girls were the last of a group of children in Yugoslavia, being prepared for emigration to Israel, when the Nazis surrounded the area where they were being hidden. The children were evacuated to northern Italy, where the priest and the physician provided a haven for them. Soon, the Nazis took over that Italian region. Father Becarrc and Dr. Moreali, however, succeeded in saving the children again, smuggling them into Switzerland, whence they were sent to Israel via Turkey.
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