Remembering the Glorious Humanity of Giorgio Perlasca
Early in the morning of May 15th, 1944, SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann oversaw the first mass transportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.
Over the course of just seven weeks, nearly 440,000 were transported to their deaths, thus leaving fewer than 300,000 alive in and around Budapest.
While Eichmann and his Hungarian partners prepared to deport the remaining 300,000, Italian-born Giorgio Perlasca embarked upon a lifesaving mission to rescue them.
As a man who once fought in the name of Fascism, Giorgio’s early life gave no clues as to the good and noble path he chose to follow…
Indeed, as a teenager, Giorgio was so enthused by Benito Mussolini, he not only enlisted to fight in “Il Duce’s” wars of East African conquest but, he went on to volunteer for the Fascist cause in civil war Spain.
Upon returning to Italy, however, in the spring of 1939, Giorgio found a country that was quite different to the one he’d left behind…
Appalled by the introduction of anti-Semitic laws and decrees, he was equally repulsed by the abuse and violence suffered by his…
