Page 24 - TORCH Magazine #10 - June 2018

The Legacy of the
RIGHTEOUS CYCLIST
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CUFI.ORG.UK
Born in Florence, Italy in 1914, Gino Bartali, a devout Catholic, was one of Italy’s most famous and successful
road cyclists. He won the Giro d’Italia race three times in 1936, 1937 and 1946 and he won the Tour de France twice, in 1938 and 1948. He also helped save the lives of hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust.
In 1943, the Nazis had invaded Italy and had captured the northern part of the country. In that region, thousands of families from Italy’s Jewish community were in hiding, hoping to escape to safety in the south, or by leaving Italy altogether. An underground resistance created a network of safe houses for Jews to hide, such as in monasteries and convents,
as well as in people’s homes. And plans were
made to smuggle Jews to safety.
A Jewish accountant, Giorgio Nissim, along with the Oblati Friars of Lucca used a printing press to forge documents for those hidden. However, they needed to transport the documents in secret, and also required photographs of each person in order to create believable fakes. How could they accomplish this task?
Enter Gino Bartali, the favoured “Iron Son of Tuscany”. By this point in his life Gino had already won the world’s most prestigious cycling tournaments. His country was proud of him and so he was a well-known face in Italy. He was also always on the road, cycling the Italian countryside as part of his training.