"Who stayed behind in Venice?"

"The elderly. The sick. The poor who had no means to travel or pay bribes. On the night of December fifth, Italian police and Fascist gangs entered the ghetto on behalf of the Germans. One hundred and sixty-three Jews were arrested. Here, in the Casa di Riposo, they hauled the elderly from their beds and loaded them onto trucks. They were sent first to an internment camp at Fossoli. Then, in February, they were transferred to Auschwitz. There were no survivors."

The rabbi took Gabriel by the elbow and together they walked slowly around the edge of the square. "The Jews of Rome were rounded up two months earlier. At five-thirty on the morning of October sixteenth, more than three hundred Germans stormed the ghetto in a driving rainstorm--SS field police along with a Waffen SS Death's Head unit. They went house to house, dragging Jews from their beds and loading them into troop trucks. They were taken to a temporary detention facility at the barracks of the Collegio Militare, about a half mile from the Vatican. Despite the horrible nature of their work that night, some of the SS men wanted to see the dome of the great Basilica, so the convoy altered its route accordingly. As it moved past St. Peter's Square, the terrified Jews in the back of the trucks pleaded with the Pope to save them. All evidence suggests he knew full well what was taking place in the ghetto that morning. It was, after all, under his very windows. He did not lift a finger to intervene."

"How many?"

"More than a thousand that night. Two days after the roundup,

the Jews of Rome were loaded onto rail cars at the Tiburtina station for the journey east. Five days after that, one thousand and sixty souls perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Birkenau."

"But many survived, did they not?"

"Indeed, remarkably, four-fifths of Italian Jewry survived the war. As soon as the Germans occupied Italy, thousands immediately sought and were provided shelter in convents and monasteries, as well as in Catholic hospitals and schools. Thousands more were given shelter by ordinary Italians. Adolf Eichmann testified at his trial that every Italian Jew who survived the war owed his life to an Italian."

"Was it because of an order from the Vatican? Was Sister Vincenza telling me the truth about the papal directive?"

"That is what the Church wishes us to believe, but I'm afraid there is no evidence to suggest the Vatican issued instructions to Church institutions to offer shelter and comfort to Jews fleeing the roundup. In fact there is evidence to suggest that the Vatican issued no such order."

"What sort of evidence?"

"There are numerous examples of Jews who sought shelter in church properties and were turned away. Others were told they had to convert to Catholicism in order to stay. Had the Pope issued a directive to throw open the doors to Jews, no mere nun or monk would have dared to disobey him. The Italian Catholics who rescued Jews did so out of goodness and compassion--not because they were acting under the orders of their Supreme Pontiff. If they had waited for a papal directive to act, I'm afraid many more Italian Jews would have died at Auschwitz and Birkenau. There was no such directive. Indeed, despite repeated appeals from the Allies and

 Jewish leaders around the world, Pope Pius never found it in his heart even to speak out against the mass murder of Europe's Jews."

"Why not? Why did he remain silent?"

The rabbi raised his hands in a helpless gesture. "He claimed that because the Church was universal, he could not be placed in the position of taking sides, even against a force as wicked as Nazi Germany. If he condemned the atrocities of Hitler, Pius said, he would also have to condemn any atrocities committed by the Allies. He claimed that by speaking out, he would only make matters worse for the Jews, though it is hard to imagine what could be worse than the murder of six million. He also saw himself as a statesman and diplomat, an actor in European affairs. He wanted to play a role in bringing about a negotiated settlement that would preserve a strong, anti-Communist Germany in the heart of Europe. I have my own theories as well."

"What are they?"

"Despite public professions of love for the Jewish people, I'm afraid His Holiness did not care much for us. Remember, he was raised in a Catholic Church that preached anti-Semitism as a matter of doctrine. He equated Jews with Bolshevism and bought into all the old hatreds that Jews were interested only in the material. Throughout the nineteen thirties, while he was the Secretary of State, the Vatican's official newspapers were filled with the same sort of anti-Semitic filth one might have read in Der Sturmer. One article in the Vatican journal La Civilta Cattolica actually discussed the possibility of eliminating the Jews through annihilation. In my opinion, Pius probably felt the Jews were getting exactly what they deserved. Why should he risk himself, and more importantly his Church, for a people he believed were guilty of history's greatest crime--the murder of God himself?"

"Then why did so many Jews thank the Pope after the war?"

"The Jews who stayed in Italy were more interested in reaching out to Christians than raising uncomfortable questions about the past. In 1945, preventing another Holocaust was more important than learning the truth. For the shattered remnants of the community, it was simply a matter of survival."

Gabriel and Rabbi Zolli arrived back at their starting point, the Casa Israelitica di Riposo, and once more stood side by side staring through the window at the elderly Jews sitting before their television.

"What was it Christ said? 'Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers'? Look at us now: the oldest continuous Jewish community in Europe, reduced to this. A few families, a few old people too sick, too near to death, to ever leave. Most nights I say Ma'ariv alone. Even on Shabbat, we have only a handful who bother to attend. Most are visitors to Venice."

He turned and looked carefully at Gabriel's face, as though he could see the telltale traces of a childhood spent on an agricultural settlement in the Jezreel Valley.

"What is your interest in this matter, Signor Delvecchio? And before you answer that question, please try to remember you are speaking to a rabbi."

"I'm afraid that falls into the category of an uncomfortable question that is better not asked."

"I feared you might say that. Just remember one thing. Memories are long in this part of the world, and things are not so good at the moment. The war, the suicide bombers.... It might not be best to stir up a hornets' nest. So tread carefully, my friend. For us."

L'Eau Vi was one of the few places in Rome where Carlo Casagrande felt at ease without a bodyguard. Located on the narrow Via Monterone, near the Pantheon, its entrance was marked only by a pair of hissing gas lamps. As Casagrande stepped inside, he was immediately confronted by a large statue of the Virgin Mary. A woman greeted him warmly by name and took his overcoat and hat. She had skin the color of coffee and wore a bright frock from her native Ivory Coast. Like all the employees of L'Eau Vive, she was a member of the Missionary Workers of the Immaculate Conception, a lay group for women connected to the Carmelites. Most came from Asia and Africa.

"Your guest has arrived, Signor Casagrande." Her Italian was heavily accented but fluent. "Follow me, please."

The humble entrance suggested a dark, cramped Roman charn with a handful of tables, but the room into which Casagrande was shown was large and open, with cheerful white walls and a soaring open-beam ceiling. As usual, every seat was filled, though, unlike other restaurants in Rome, the clientele was all male and almost exclusively Vatican. Casagrande spotted no fewer than four cardinals. Many of the other clerics looked like ordinary priests, but Casagrande's trained eye easily picked out the gold chains that marked bishops and the purple piping that revealed the Monsignori. Besides, no simple priest could afford to eat at L'Eau Vive, not unless he was receiving support from a well-to-do relative back home. Even Casagrande's modest Vatican salary would be pushed to the breaking point by a meal at L'Eau Vive. Tonight was business, however, and the cost would be covered by his generous operational expense account.