My grandma’s Shoah stories | October 16, 1943, with Sara Pavoncello

During World War II, Catholic nuns, priests and non-Jewish citizens were involved in rescuing Jews in Rome (as elsewhere) from persecution by Nazi Germany. They did this by providing false documents and hiding Jews in monasteries and convents. Direct action by Church members saved hundreds of thousands of Jews, including institutions within the Vatican itself.

Holocaust Remembrance Day serves as a date for official commemoration of the victims of the Nazi regime and for the promotion of  Holocaust education throughout the world. 

 Here in Rome, Sara Pavoncello, granddaughter of one of the living survivors saved from capture by the Nazi soldiers, narrates a lesser-known story orally documented by the United States Holocaust Museum Archivists in October 2023 (see photo below).

Sara Pavoncello’s grandmothers  oral interview by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist in her home in the Jewish Quarter, October 2023
(Photograph: Courtesy of Roma Kosher Tours)

 A short Tik Tok video (see the link below) was also created by Dov Forman interviewing Sara Pavoncello with her grandmother. The following link briefly shows Sara with her grandmother in the same apartment where her grandmother was born and lived. It is the very same apartment, explains Sara, where her grandmother, her parents, four siblings, and a non-Jewish neighbor in the same building managed to escape with the help of the family’scousin on October 16, 1943, as Nazi soldiers were deporting all the Jews from Rome.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CydjYw7N4XQ/

Sara Pavoncello with her grandmother
(Photograph: Courtesy of Roma Kosher Tours)

My colleagues from the Jewish Museum of Rome address the history of antisemitism on their tours. Indeed, museum educators and licensed tour guides from this community offer specific insights, including their personal life stories about growing up in the community, likewise sharing their own family’s Holocaust stories. Furthermore, other colleagues from the United States, Canada, Europe, Tunisia, Libya, and Israel, who have moved and settled in Rome, also provide their respective experiences as active members of the community.

 Through their first-hand real-life experience as Jews, they can focus on ensuring that participants on their tours are equipped with relevant knowledge, skills, and competencies.

In fact, special consideration is given to non-Jewish participants in  these tours, both students and teachers, who want to learn about the Holocaust from Jews themselves. 

It is my sincere hope that my educational blogs about the Holocaust empower readers from all faiths and backgrounds to value a culture of human rights,  Moreover, I trust that my readers will also be eager  to resist antisemitic slurs and misconceptions— fallacious behavioir causing  discrimination and violence against Jews. Antisemitism begins with ignorant and malign words, but it can escalate from there. It doesn’t end with mere words.

 I would like to conclude by sharing with you two other recent Shoà interviews:

The Blogs: October 16th, 1943, Rome, 80 years later | Brenda Lee Bohen | The Times of  IsraeL

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/october-16-1943-rome-80-years-later/

The Blogs: The Jewish Tour Guide in Rome Whose Grandparents Hid in the Vatican Museums during the Holocaust | Brenda Lee Bohen | The Times of Israel

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-jewish-tour-guide-in-rome-whose-grandparents-hid-in-the-vatican-museums-during-the-holocaust/