Jan 30, 2008 / 13:07 pm
Karel Weirich, a Czech journalist whose mother’s last name was coincidentally Schindler—like the famous character of the Steven Spielberg movie—complied a series of lists with hundreds of names of Czechoslovakian Jews captured by the Nazis in Italy who he helped with money, clothing, medicines and eventually escape from their captors.
In an article entitled, “The Schindler of Pius XII,” written by Gaetano Vallini, the L’Osservatore Romano reported that “Weirich, a hidden and unknown hero, can be included among the saviors of the world in one of the darkest periods of history.”
“It’s not for nothing,” Vallini writes, “that the book by Alberto Tronchin about this person is entitled ‘A Re-Found ‘Joy’’, which tells how he saved hundreds of Czechs,” and was published “thanks to his niece Helena, who had access to his precious documents, not only the names, but the letters, identity documents and testimonies of an intense and risky activity.”
His story