Luciano laughed ruefully. “Do not change the subject.”
“You may think I’m rationalizing. And I probably am. But I know one thing. She makes me serve him better. In fact, she is the very reason I serve.”
Monsignor Luciano raised his eyebrows and folded his hands, ever the patient father, listening as his child tried to talk his way out of hell.
“In every Jewish face, I see her. I think it would be easier to ignore their plight and say, as some have done, it was foretold. They crucified our Lord. Some say that, Monsignor. You know they do.”
Monsignor Luciano nodded his head once, slowly, and Angelo knew with a flash of intuition that the monsignor had said the very same thing himself at one time or another.
“But Eva didn’t crucify our Lord. Her father didn’t either. Not a single Jew living on this earth crucified our Lord.” Angelo felt his neck getting hot and his temper building in his chest. He paused and took a deep breath, reminding himself that the monsignor was not the one persecuting the Jews.
“They are just people. And many of them, most of them, are good people. Camillo and Eva loved me and gave me a home; they are my home. Signore Rosselli would never admit it, but I know that he gave a great deal of money to the church so that I would be allowed to attend seminary. I believe he donated again so that I would have a position waiting for me when I became a priest. I never waited in line, Monsignor. Unlike so many others, after ordination I was immediately assigned a parish. It was that money and your influence, not anything I did.
“Camillo gave my grandparents a home, and when the laws were passed—those ridiculous laws—Camillo Rosselli signed his possessions and all his property over to them. He asked that they would return a portion if the laws were ever revoked. And if they weren’t, he asked that they look after Eva and give her a home when he was gone, should she need it.
“When I see a family running for their lives, no home, no country, no one to protect them—hunted—I see Eva, and it makes me try harder. It makes me pray harder. It gives me purpose, Monsignor. I see Eva.”
“Try instead to picture our Lord. Instead of seeing Eva, you should see our Lord. Our Lord was a Jew too, Angelo.” The monsignor’s voice was pleading, trying to redirect his focus to a safer place.
“Yes. He was. And if he were on earth today, the Germans would arrest him too. They would arrest his mother. They would arrest the apostles. They would load them all aboard a northbound train, traveling for days without a place to sit. They would make them stand in their waste, no water, no food. And when they finally arrived at their destination, they would work them to death or gas them immediately.”
“Angelo!” The monsignor was aghast at Angelo’s crass response. Angelo almost laughed out loud at his horrified expression. But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t cover his head and cry either, which was what he wanted to do. It was crass. But it was true. Funny how that worked.
“Here is the difference, Monsignor. Jesus gave himself willingly. He could have saved himself. But he was God. And he chose. Eva is just a girl. She wasn’t given a choice. The Jewish people have been stripped of choice. They have been stripped of liberty. They have been stripped of dignity. And they cannot save themselves.”
Throughout the next day, Angelo watched the military college where the Jews gathered in the roundup were being held. It was close enough to the Vatican that he could see portions of the courtyard from the window in Monsignor Luciano’s office. He arranged for food to be delivered to the prisoners, as much as he could gather and cobble together with permission from his higher-ups. The soldiers made them leave it in the courtyard. He wasn’t certain anyone inside received any of it.
There was little movement. German soldiers with submachine guns guarded the facility, and no one left. But in the early-morning hours of October 18, forty-eight hours after the raid began in the old ghetto, army trucks started leaving the Italian Military College. When Angelo arrived at dawn he managed to arrange for a Vatican car to follow the row of trucks at a distance. The trucks didn’t go through the regular terminal, nor were the prisoners put aboard passenger trains. He and Monsignor O’Flaherty, the Irish senior official who had cleared the food delivery, watched as the trucks filed into the loading platform at Tiburtina Station. Men, women, and children, many still in their pajamas, the clothes they were arrested in, were loaded into freight cars, packed in at full capacity with barely room to stand and no room to sit. The doors were shut and locked. The empty trucks left and returned again, several times.
All day they watched. Truck after truck arrived at the loading dock, and the process was repeated. The day was warm, but the cars were never reopened. The people inside never received water, and the cattle cars had no bathrooms. Angelo and Monsignor O’Flaherty could only watch from afar—a pair of cassocked spies sharing a set of binoculars. They couldn’t hear the crying children or the questions that must have been raised among the crowded occupants of the trains. But they voiced some of their own.
Why would the Germans want to transport all those people hundreds of miles just to kill them? And what reason would they have to kill them in the first place? It would be completely irrational. Surely, they would be put to work. It was the only logical conclusion.
But Angelo knew. He’d had a group of refugees from Czechoslovakia that had told him about the trains. And the evidence was in front of his eyes. The words he’d said to Monsignor Luciano in the early-morning hours of the previous day were riveted in his head: They would load them all aboard a northbound train, traveling for days without a place to sit. They would make them stand in their waste, no water, no food. And when they finally arrived at their destination, they would work them to death or gas them immediately.
“Why won’t the Pope do something?” Angelo cried, watching yet another transport arrive. “Can’t he intercede? These are Rome’s Jews! They were guaranteed this wouldn’t happen. And it’s happening! We are standing here doing nothing to save them.”
Monsignor O’Flaherty put down the binoculars and rubbed at his tired face, crossing himself and muttering a quiet prayer before he turned to Angelo with wounded eyes.
“I can’t answer that, Angelo. All I know is that sometimes we only see our corner of hell. The Pope has to consider what intercession in one place will mean in every corner, to all people. If he starts making demands for these Jews, what will Hitler do? The line is so tenuous, Angelo. Lives hang in the balance of every decision. Many lives. More lives than these. The church is hiding thousands of Jews and caring for people in every community throughout the world. We can’t continue doing what we’re doing if we draw a target on the Vatican walls, now can we?”
Angelo had no answer, and he could do little but watch as his corner of hell continued to widen. Finally, at two p.m., eight hours after the first trucks arrived at the loading dock, the cargo train—pulling twenty freight cars filled with more than twelve hundred of Rome’s Jews—left Tiburtina Station.
20 October, 1943
Confession: Uncle Felix was right about long notes.