Today is the last day of the Melton Seminar and we continue learning the story of the Roman Jews by walking the length and breadth of the Jewish Ghetto. We have two guides this morning. The first is Sarah who takes us on a walking tour through the Ghetto that gives us history and background. Our second guide/teacher is Dr. Anna Foa, an academic who has studied and written on the Nazi roundup of the Jews who lived in the area of the old Ghetto during WW II. Haim had sent us excerpts of her book prior to the trip, so we were all eager to meet her. In addition to walking with us through the Ghetto area, we are lucky enough to have a study session with her.
During Sarah's tour we learned the Ghetto was imposed on the Jews in 1555 and abolished in 1870. There were 5 schuls (synagogues) in the Ghetto, 2 Spanish, 1 Sicilian, 1 Roman, and 1 for Italians from other areas. None of these 5 still exist today. There were about 2500 Jews in the Ghetto when it began and about 7000 living on the same footprint when the Ghetto was abolished. The Jews in the Ghetto lived in great poverty and the only way to build new residences was by adding floors to existing structures. Churches surrounded the gated entrances in order for the Jews to see "the true way" as they went in and out during the day.
Church with Hebrew inscription over door
At night the Jews were locked in with heavy gates. Jewish attendance at mass in the surrounding churches was compulsory, since one purpose of the Ghetto was to convince the Jews to convert.
Today's Seminar learning sessions concentrated on the Jews of Rome in the modern era and so we heard the stories of the Nazi roundup of the Roman Jews in October, 1943. The Nazis' goal was to round up 8000 Jews, but with only 300 soldiers, this proved difficult. At 5:30 AM they started to go door to door in the area of the former Ghetto, but non-Jews living in the area alerted their Jewish neighbors. The Nazis managed to round up only 1256 people who were taken to Largo Square in the Ghetto. Some of these people managed to escape and some were not Jewish, but the remaining 1022 Jews were taken by bus to the Military Academy. On the morning of October 18, 1943 these 1022 people were sent by train to Auschwitz. Only a handful returned.
For every Jew that was taken, 11 managed to escape, mostly due to the aid of their non-Jewish friends and neighbors. Many Jewish men lept from back windows as the round up began and were kept hidden in the Convent of Via de S. Ambrosia.
The new synagogue in the Ghetto area was built after the emancipation and opening of the Ghetto in the late 1800's. It is sumptuous and lavishly decorated, even thought most of the Jews who lived in Rome at the time of the opening of the Ghetto were poor.
Decorating the synagogue was a statement to the Church that the Jews were free to worship and act as true Italian citizens. Women took scraps of cloth and hand-embroidered beautiful Torah covers and cloths for the tables on which the Torah was placed while reading from it. We saw many of these ritual objects on a tour of the Jewish Museum with a fabulous guide, Ursala. She also took us to the synagogue where we had the privilege of singing a song of congratulations to a couple celebrating their anniversary who had joined our group for the Museum tour. The wife is a Holocaust survivor - a poignant end to our stories of the Jews of Italy.
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