FELT. The documentation for the recognition of Don Giulio Gaio as “Righteous among the nations” was sent to the Israeli embassy in Rome.
“In case of acceptance of our request”, say Enrico Gaz and Renato Beino, presidents respectively of the Feltrina Family and of the Santissimi Martiri association who have supported this initiative since the beginning of spring, “we will be able to count our Don Giulio among the characters who fall into the memory of the heroes of the Holocaust ».
Don Giulio Gaio hid a Slovenian Jew named Hermann Muller in San Vittore and saved his life.
The very rich and varied documentation produced and now sent to the Israeli embassy was collected by Gianmario Dal Molin and Enrico Bacchetti, vice president of Isbrec in Belluno.
The work that the two historians have dealt with consisted of documentary research and oral testimonies, and in the analysis of the biography of Don Giulio Gaio derived from the acts of the Episcopal Curia of Feltre and from biographical notes by Sisto Dalla Palma. To these were added the eyewitness accounts of Don Lino Mottes and Don Giuseppe Minella, seminarians at the time, certified by the notary Zamberlan and by the court of Belluno and testimonies of deceased people. Among these are those of Don Giulio Perotto, the diary notes of Don Giulio Gaio taken from “In the cells of the German police”, and those of Franca Fiaccadori, mother of Don Giulio Gaio and custodian of her son’s confidences.
Prefect, bishop, mayor of Feltre, the Belluno Historical Institute of the Resistance and of the Contemporary Age, Anpi di Belluno supported the cause. Among the testimonies on the figure of Don Giulio Gaio in the Resistance, valid contributions came from Luigi Doriguzzi, Piero Bonsembiante, Franco De Biasi, all partisans, and then from Enrico Bertoldin and Corona Perer, author of the book “Don Giulio Gaio the guardian of the Sanctuary “. There is also an anonymous letter from a clerical-fascist against Don Giulio.
What actually followed up the search for an identity for the Jew who arrived at the sanctuary, the historical curators of the research Gianmario Dal Molin and Enrico Bacchetti point out, “was a note reported in the diary of Don Giulio by Luigi Doriguzzi and Don Guido Caviola and an anonymous nun who transcribed the passage relating to “a native Jew residing in Ljubljana”. From here began the consultation of the list of Jews already interned in the province of Belluno, preserved in the state archives of Belluno. Not an easy task, the historians admit: “Don Giulio Gaio always spoke with a certain modesty and confidentiality about the fact, and the information reported in the various testimonies was scarce”.
It was known that “Ermanno”, so called softly by the seminarians, was a Jew of mature age, perhaps hidden after 8 September in San Vittore; who carried out resistance activities with the partisan groups of Mount Tomatico and who on the night of Santa Marina was in the seminary to lead the Venetian partisan Ermann to safetyor Colonna, slain by the SS.
It was known of the ascent of the Gestapo on Miesna, when Don Giulio was arrested, and of the rapid destruction of the documents of the wanted Jew. But to trace the true identity of the Eastern Jew it took many hours of research and study.
The discovery
Hermann Muller was the name of the Jew saved from being shot by the SS who were on his trail in San Vittore. Son of Leopoldo and Caterina Fried, he was born in Zagreb on December 14, 1897, an industrialist and declared fit to work in the census of June 21, 1943. He was single, of Yugoslav citizenship and coming from Ljubljana.
In the list of Jews already interned in the province, kept in the state archives, there are three “Hermanns”, two of whom are Polish and one Slovenian, precisely from Ljubljana. Don Giulio Gaio, also to protect his seminarians, had always kept buttoned on the physical description of the Jew hidden under the coop of the pigs. Don Lino Mottes confirms this in his story “A year of terror and grace” which he documents at the time of the Nazi incursion, also experienced by the very young seminarians. But it was the reference to the Slovenian city in the diary of the parish priest in prison that guided Gianmario Dal Molin and Enrico Bacchetti and led them to identify the mysterious Jew from whom the rector of the sanctuary had leaked little or nothing.
«Listed», the historians summarize, «documented Hermann Strauber, 41, a Pole who managed to escape to Naples and embark for Fort Ontario in the USA; Hermann Gardner, 30 years old Polish who was deported to Auschwitz where he most likely died after 1944. And Hermann Muller, 56, interned in Feltre and moved away with an unknown destination in the autumn of 1943, whose identity seems to fully correspond to the one narrated in the various testimonies “.
Moreover, from the Belluno State Archives it is documented that Hermann Muller was interned in Sedico between 10 and 31 October 1941. From here he was transferred to Quero on an unknown date, as shown in the census of 21 June 1943. And subsequently transferred to Feltre “From which he has left for an unknown destination in the census of 2 October 1943”. But Feltre is also the last municipality of internment. And he was never deported, even this appears to the actsl. m.
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