Daily BrewMontreal school named after recently-besmirched ‘Nazi collaborator’ weighing options
The Montreal school board that named a building after a man once believed to be a Jewish savior during WWII, but more recently tarnished as a Nazi collaborator, is considering what to do about the suddenly-awkward moniker.
New research by the Centro Primo Levi in New York has thrown into question the glowing story of Giovanni Palatucci, an Italian police official credited with saving thousand of Jews during the Holocaust.
But after dozens of scholars recently parsed through hundreds of documents at the time, it was recently concluded that not only wasn’t Palatucci a hero, he was “a willing executor of the racial legislation and — after taking the oath to Mussolini’s Social Republic, collaborated with the Nazis.”
[ Related: Jews tell pope of concern over moves to make Pius XII a saint ]
Palatucci had previously been considered the Italian Oskar Schindler for his role in saving thousands of Jews from being deported to Nazi concentration camps. As such, honours and dedications have been thrown his way over the years. He was declared a martyr by Pope John Paul II, and public spaces have been dedicated to him in New York, Italy and Israel. And then there is Montreal's Giovanni Palatucci Facility.
The Canadian Jewish News reported on Monday that the facility, which houses among other things a school for students with special needs, will keep its name until further investigation on the issue is done.
The school, renamed in 2006, was formerly known as Wager High School. It was symbolically chosen because of its prominent located in a predominantly Jewish section of the city.
That symbolism, now, plays like salt in the wounds.
The Globe and Mail reports the English Montreal School Board (EMSB) is trying to figure out what to do about the potentially poorly-named school.
“At the time, we did it in good faith,” chairperson Angela Mancini told the newspaper “Now we’re wondering what is going to happen next … for us it came as a shock. We’re now saying, ‘Maybe we have to go back to the drawing board.’ ”
The school board is said to take its cues from Yad Vashem, an organization that is an authority on all things Holocaust. And Yad Vashem’s website still contains positive reflections about Palatucci.
He distinguished himself as gentle and reliable in his relations with local Jews, who were afflicted by two harsh anti-Jewish laws regarding internment, one applied in September 1938 and another in June 1940, which suddenly turned them into foreigners or without nationality. Elena Eshkenasy Dafner recalled that Palatucci issued transit permits to her relatives who arrived clandestinely from Vienna, and others recollect delays in his executing internment orders.
[ More Brew: Detroit fireworks showcase gets a boost from pals in Windsor ]
Of course, Palatucci is not without his supporters. A website dedicated to Palatucci are critical of attempts to "revisit the historical memory of Giovanni Palatucci."
It will take time for the repercussions of this new narrative to work its way through to the modern day. It must be an uncommon thing to see history rewritten some 70 years later, so the EMSB’s decision to investigate the situation further seems appropriate.
The bigger question is: Can the pope un-martyr someone?
