Obituary: Guelfo Zamboni (CORRECTED)

CORRECTION (PUBLISHED 15 MARCH 1994) INCORPORATED INTO THIS ARTICLE

Guelfo Zamboni, diplomat: born Santa Sofia (Forli) 22 October 1896; died Rome 5 March 1994.

GUELFO ZAMBONI took up the post of Italian Consul General in Salonika, the second largest city in Greece, at the beginning of March 1943. During the next few months, and at great personal risk, he saved the lives of 280 Jews destined for Auschwitz by issuing them with false travel documents so that they could be transferred to safety in Italian-controlled regions of Greece.

Greece was occupied at the time by both German and Italian forces, who had a firm grip over the towns even though their control of the countryside was often tenuous. It was from the towns, that had already suffered greatly from the shortage of food, notably in the terrible winter of 1941-42, that the Germans - against Greek and to some extent Italian protests - deported and eventually exterminated Greece's Jewish community.

There had been a large and prosperous Jewish community in Salonika, ever since the 15th century when nearly 20,000 Jews, banished from Spain and speaking Ladino, had come to settle in the city under tolerant Ottoman rule. At the beginning of March 1943, the German SS began rounding up Jews in Salonika and on 15 March the first trainload of Jews departed for Poland.

During the next five months, 18 more trains, the last of which left on 7 August, made the same journey. Almost 50,000 Jews from Salonika arrived in Auschwitz: 37,386 died in the gas chambers immediately after their arrival.

When Zamboni arrived in the city, the majority of the Jewish community was already locked up in a concentration camp, awaiting deportation. Soon after Zamboni's arrival, a rumour started circulating among the Jews that anyone who could demonstrate any sort of Italian kinship could receive false travel papers at the Italian consulate and be transferred to Athens. The Greek capital was under Italian military jurisdiction.

Moise Nahmias was one of the lucky ones. 'At the consulate they gave me a certificate that was valid for one year that stated my name, date of birth and Italian nationality,' Nahmias told Joseph Rochlitz, the maker of the television documentary The Righteous Enemy, in the 1980s. 'In reality I was a Greek, born in Salonika and my only link to Italy was my wife's parents who were born in Trieste.'

For the Jews in Salonika, Zamboni represented the only hope. Dozens came to the consulate every day. 'They would plead and cry, they would kneel and throw themselves at my feet and try to kiss my shoes. I was afraid that all this commotion would attract too much attention,' Zamboni recalled at his home in Rome two years ago.

Zamboni was well aware of the Germans' plans to exterminate the Jews and how they intended to carry them out. In the early 1930s, he had served as the Italian vice-ambassador in Berlin, where he had learnt to speak some German and had become familiar with Adolf Hitler's ideas of racial purity. 'Even though the Germans were our allies, I had to salve my own conscience,' he explained.

For months, at great risk to his own safety, Zamboni fabricated hundreds of false 'provisional ' documents. 'I couldn't demonstrate that these people were Italian citizens, but I could claim that the nationalisation procedure was under way,' he said. Zamboni personally helped many of the Jews board trains bound for areas under Italian control.

Lucillo Merci, a German-language teacher, who was Zamboni's assistant and acted as the liaison officer with the German forces, testified that the commander of the SS in Salonika, Hauptsturmfuhrer Wisliceny, and the German head of civil administration, Dr Merten, were infuriated by Zamboni's

actions.

In his diary Merci noted that on one particular occasion Wisliceny rebuked Zamboni for attempting to obtain exemptions for elderly and sick Jews who were to be deported and accused him of not following the Italian government's instructions. Zamboni had hardly been intimidated and replied without hesitation: 'As long as the Italian flag flies here, under this flag I am the only one who decides what to do or what not to do.'

Zamboni was not alone in his defiance of German orders. Carlo Geloso, the military commander of the Italian occupation forces and Pellegrino Chigi, Italy's minister plenipotentiary in Athens, systematically did everything possible to prevent the round-up of Jews. So while, on the one hand, Mussolini had assured Hitler that all non-

Italian Jews would be handed over to the Germans, on the other, the Italians in Greece did everything they could to thwart the Germans' efforts. The Cambridge historian Jonathan Steinberg, in his book All or Nothing (1990), has fully documented the actions of the Italian diplomats and soldiers who contravened Mussolini's orders.

Zamboni retired from the diplomatic service in 1963. In 1992, he was named a Righteous Gentile and honoured with a medal from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem for saving the lives of 280 Jews.

Zamboni claimed that he had been prevented from marrying by a Fascist law that prohibited Italian citizens from marrying foreigners. A law that he described as 'another one of Mussolini's acts of

foolishness'.