She risked her life to save Massimo Foa and the couple Mario Zargani and Eugenia Tedeschi from deportation during the Second World War. S uor Giuseppina Demuro, from Lanusei, has been recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. This was announced by Shalom, the Jewish news daily.
The title, obtained thanks to the interest of the Jewish Community of Turin, will be awarded to the museum of the Le Nuove prison in Turin, the place where from 1925 to 1965 the nun dedicated herself to the service of the inmates.
Essayist and entrepreneur Massimo Foa, who passed away ten years ago, was just nine months old when, thanks to Sister Giuseppina, he was smuggled out among the dirty sheets of the prison and entrusted to Tilde Roda Boggia, who raised him like a son. His parents Guido Foa and Elena Recanati and his paternal grandfather Donato were also arrested in Canischio by the soldiers of the X Mas, taken to the Le Nuove prison and then deported.
The father was probably killed during the Death March, while the mother miraculously survived the horror of the extermination camps of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. To save the Zargani and Tedeschi spouses, captured in the Biella area and taken to prison, Sister Giuseppina invented a disease in order to have them transferred to the hospital and then escape.
Mario Zargani, violinist of the Teatro Regio and of Eiar, the predecessor of Rai, was expelled from the orchestra in 1938 because of the racial laws. His son Aldo and his brother Roberto found salvation by hiding in a Salesian convent.
(Online Union)