Rain All Night
Ponsot, Marie
Rain All Night On the road home the tide is rising. Riding the road-tide is dangerous but it's not safe to stand still. Hang on the verge & you drown. I'm going along for the ride. I may see...
...In Spain, the commander of a battery in my artillery regiment was a Jew from Rome...
...To be sure, Perlasca had some attributes for the role that not everyone has—good looks, an imposing physical stature, and, thanks to his service in Spain, a good command of Spanish—but it was his imaginative capacity to draw upon those resources in playing the role of Jorge that made him so convincing...
...In a country whose new constitution defined it as an "anti-Fascist"republic, it was not likely that a Fascist like Perlasca would be recognized as a hero...
...Unlike Hitler's "willing executioners," Perlasca retained the ability to think for himself, to respond not only to the dictates of ideology but to the evidence of his personal experience and his own perception of reality...
...First, his new identity enabled him to distance himself from the horror, from the scenes of cruelty and brutality that, witnessed and lived first hand, might have been so overwhelming as to be paralyzing...
...I may see more riders further on...
...Perlasca's own account of the events (presented in chapter 6 of Deaglio's book) has the narrative intensity of a thriller whose protagonist is completely caught up in a challenge that demands every resource he can muster...
...Like others among the minority of his fellow Italian Christians who helped both Italian and foreign Jews, Perlasca shared what Susan Zuccotti has called an "amiable inclination to ignore the rules" and a "traditional peasant contempt for the authorities...
...He didn't have a role, it must be remembered...
...They all believed that he was someone he was not: an official functionary and diplomatic representative, with duties for which he had neither professional training nor experience...
...As Deaglio points out, there were a lot of Italians who helped Jews or delayed or deflected the course of events by refusing to commit brutalities, or merely by hiding a file or making a phone call to warn intended victims...
...How is it possible," she inquired, "that a person like that is living somewhere in Italy and nobody has ever even heard his name...
...Because I couldn't stand seeing children being killed...
...But the strategy succeeded in delaying the Final Solution in Hungary until the Soviet army occupied Budapest and put an end to the deportations...
...The most obvious, of course, is why did he do it...
...Perlasca, the Fascist who had returned safely to Italy, could not be used in the same way...
...Nor was his virtuous action exhausted in a single gesture...
...While holding out the promise of Spanish recognition and assistance in the event of an Allied victory, Perlasca threatened the Hungarian authorities with retaliation against Hungarian citizens in Spain, should their government go forward with its plans to exterminate the Jews...
...And second, theatrical distance enhanced his ability to see and understand the motivations of his Hungarian counterparts, and to develop and carry out a diplomatic strategy that responded to their needs and fears...
...I think I'll remember them rather than so many others because they were so strikingly alike, because they were alone, and because they were so beautiful...
...In creating the identity of "Jorge," Perlasca succeeded in fooling not only the Hungarian authorities but also his colleagues at the other neutral embassies...
...Further illumination on his choice comes from his response to another question: Why did he break with the Fascist party over the 1938 racial laws...
...Compare Perlasca's treatment with that afforded his colleague in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg...
...Eveline Blitstein Willinger, the woman who led efforts in 1987 to find Perlasca and to have him recognized for what he had done...
...So many of my friends were Jews, in Fiume, Trieste, and Como...
...But what Perlasca accomplished is unique and astounding...
...Giorgio Perlasca died of a sudden heart attack at his home in Padua, on August 15,1992, just before publication of the fourth Italian edition of the Deaglio book...
...One more factor, however, was the ideological polarization of postwar Italian politics...
...I couldn't understand the discrimination against the Jews...
...The tendency of ideology to obscure reality is also part of the answer to another question asked by Dr...
...After all, at one time he had been a committed Fascist...
...he created it himself...
...I don't think I was a hero...
...In the face of an obviously contrasting reality, no one could tell them that...Jews were their enemy" (The Italians and the Holocaust, University of Nebraska Press, 1996...
...Marie Ponsot them, although I think they made it...
...Both the promise and the threat, of course, were complete fabrications, since Perlasca never had any communication with his "superiors" in Madrid...
...Perlasca's dramatic contribution to the rescue effort raises a number of compelling questions...
...As the story unfolds it becomes clear that Perlasca's theatrical imagination was in fact the key to his success...
...But I'll always remember when I saw them walking forward together in that line...
...D Commonweal 14 December 3,1999...
...Because I couldn't stand the sight of people being branded like animals," he told Deaglio...
...Drowning must wait till I get there and who knows who might be waiting with a flash-light, a thermos, even a raft or a canoe...
...The recognition Wallenberg received for his work in Budapest was due in part to its usefulness as a weapon in the cold war...
...Part of the postwar silence about Perlasca stemmed from a general desire to forget the Holocaust and the war...
...Enrico Deaglio concludes his book by paraphrasing Hannah Arendt in describing Perlasca as "proof that, even in the most impenetrable darkness, there exists—because it is part of the human spirit—the temptation of the irreducible, fabulous, word-and-thought-defying 'banality of goodness.'" Perlasca's story also reminds us, however, that the expression of human goodness in the struggle against human evil is an enterprise whose success requires not only courage and perseverance but also skill, craft, art, and imagination...
...The Swedish envoy disappeared immediately following the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest, and his disappearance was later used as a means of attacking the Soviet Union...
...Perlasca's answer may seem deceptively simple...
...Thaf s what I think it was...
...During the nearly two months Perlasca directed the Spanish embassy, he was engaged in an enormous act of make-believe...
...Another reason was the guilt of individuals involved in recognizing their own failure to act...
...Commonweal 12 December 3,1999 The most extraordinary aspect of Perlasca's rescue operation, however, is not why he did it but how...
Vol. 126 • December 1999 • No. 21
