Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, October 9, 1994                   TAG: 9410140030
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO                                 LENGTH: Medium

JEWS, RESCUERS COME TOGETHER

One Italian family and their neighbors risked their own lives to keep the Jewish newlyweds from the fate that claimed millions of other European Jews.

The 81-year-old woman was reunited with a member of that Italian family, Dr. Fernando Giustini, 63, now of Wheeling, W.Va.

The two joined about 150 Jews and Italian-Americans at a conference Friday that brought together Holocaust survivors and their Italian rescuers.

The conference was part of a nine-city symposium designed to show that although Italy was aligned with Hitler in World War II, its people did not wholeheartedly support the persecution of Jews.

Eight-five percent of Italian Jews were saved, while only 20 percent of Jews from other countries survived, said Maria Lombardo, educational director of the National Italian-American Foundation, sponsor of the conference.

``To the surprise of many, there were countless instances of heroic and moral courage displayed by Italians during the war,'' she said.

Deutsch described how she and her husband ended up at the Ferramonti internment camp in Italy, until being sent to the small town of Corchiano. There, Giustini's father, a leader in the Italian resistance, and Deutsch's husband became friends.

Deutsch fought back tears as she described how a Nazi ordered her husband to return to Ferramonti, though she was about to give birth. He never saw his son, who died at age 6 months.

After the Nazis invaded Italy in 1943, Giustini's family hid Deutsch and her mother, ignoring the potential penalty of death for harboring Jews, Giustini said.

``I asked the people `How come you risked your lives to save me and my mother, two Jewish ladies?''' Deutsch said. ``They said, `Because of your smile.'''

Deutsch's husband wound up with the British army, traveling through Italy as an interpreter. They were reunited in 1944; six years later they immigrated to the United States and settled in Chicago's northern suburbs. Her husband died in 1976.