in
paperback:
The Battle for
Rome - Italian edition; The Jews in Italy
under Fascist and Nazi Rule
The
changing landscape of the Aldo Moro tragedy: new revelations mark
30th anniversary of the kidnapping and assassination of Italy's preeminent
statesman.
ARK obtains Washington's long-secret
files on Aldo Moro. The CIA, FBI, and Department of State collections
from 1962-1982; thousands of documents, released (reluctantly) to the
Archives of Robert Katz under the Freedom of Information Act, now being
catalogued, go on public view in Pergine Valdarno.
Among the early findings was myth-busting
evidence of the U.S.'s pivotal role in backing the Rome government's shaky
hard-line stance. From only minutes after the Moro kidnapping on March
16, 1978, Washington was pounded by
an unprecedented outpouring of diplomatic telegrams,
directly from its
Ambassador, Richard Gardner. His skewed reports and comments arriving
daily — and sometimes virtually minute by minute —
disclose a hidden agenda to quash any initiative to gain Moro's release
and keep the Andreotti government in lockstep with an untried no-negotiations
policy of leaving all stones unturned.
These telelgrams, wrote the Corriere
della Sera in an advance review of the material, "[provide]
a photograph of a Nation crushed by terrorism and trampled on by the political
tension of the gravest crisis in its history as a republic, as seen by
a Washington preoccupied by the possible consequences for its Italian
ally." (click image for readable text)
Thus Gardner stressed, and often stretched,
the "good news." In one telegram, for example, he reassured
Washington that "From a source with ties to the [Moro] family, we
understand that the family itself is opposed to the idea of an exchange
[of prisoners]... they do not believe that Moro, himself, would want to
be exchanged under circumstances which would be humiliating to him and
to the state." Queried by the Corriere, a family spokesman replied
unequivocally, "Any thought that the Moro family was contrary to
an exchange of the president with whoever simply never existed."
As for Gardner, his response to the Corriere was "I don't
remember." Neither that telelgram nor any of the others, he said.
The Tuscan town of Pergine Valdarno (pop. 3200) as seen in a satellite
photo .High above the Arno river valley, some 60 kms. soufh of Florence,
Pergine originated as an Etruscan settlement. In the 2700 years
since, it has seen much, "but not all," says Katz, "which
is why I chose it." More about that choice can be found in
the accompanying article.
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About the archives
An American writer's long, hard look at the Italy
of his times, the content of Robert
Katz's "ark," settles in under a Tuscan sky
Recently donated by the author to the small hilltop
township where
he resides, the archive has already received the state's highest designation:
"archive of notable interest"
ERGINE
VALDARNO (from combined dispatches) — Robert Katz, the American
historian who became famous in Italy with the publication of his book
Death in Rome, the fundamental reconstruction of the Ardeatine
Caves massacre, has decided to donate his archives to the town of Pergine
Valdarno. An official report to the Tuscan regional government's directorate
of cultural affairs, concluded that Katz's choice represents an "unquestionable
enrichment of the documentary holdings both for Tuscany and nationally."
The report went on to describe the contents of the archive, noting that
it included a library of about 1,000 rare books. According to this assessment
of the archive, another feature setting it apart from standard items –
in this case nearly 100,000 pages of correspondence, diaries, and written
and audio-visual documents – consists of a vast array of material collected
by the author during his ten-year court battle in Rome with the Vatican.
"It contains a wealth of information about many well-known personalities,"
the report states. They range from several historical figures to international
titans of the film world – an extension of the author's unique documentation
of the Americans in Rome throughout the 1970s.
Now
on DVD
The Unholy Battle for Rome
The
History Channel's Primetime Special is based on Robert Katz's international
best seller The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies the Partisans
and the Pope, September 1945-June 1944.
"In September
1943, the German army marched into Rome, beginning a 9-month battle for
control of the "Eternal
City". It was the Allied aim to preserve the Holy
City's sacred institutions and treasures. So the staggering human cost
before the city's military conquest is nearly incomprehensible.... We
hear from ordinary Roman citizens, informants, opportunists, spies, double
agents, and Germans who risked death in efforts to save Jews. We see Rome
as the hotbed of assassination, intrigue, treason, and bravery that it
was as we look unflinchingly at unresolved controversies." - The
History Channel online
The Film:The
Unholy Battle for Rome written
by Norman Stahl, produced by Lou Reda for The History
Channel
The special is based on the book The Battle for Rome--its author
Robert Katz was subject to five penal proceedings over the years
for his contention that fear of Communism produced a Faustian pact
between the Vatican and the occupying Germans. The research draws
on interviews with participants inside the city, and also on previously
secret documents from Italian, German, Vatican, OSS and CIA archives:."
- The History Channel.
Interviewees
(in order of appearance): Lt.Col. Roger Cirillo (ret.), Col. Rod
Paschal (ret.), editor, MHQ, Carlo D'Este. Military Historian, Robert
Katz, Liliana Picciotto, Jewish Document Center, Milan, Peter Tompkins
ex-OSS chief and undercover spy in Nazi-occupied Rome, Elvira Sabbatini
Paladini, director, Museum of the Liberation of Rome, Rosario Bentivegna,
ex-partisan and a commander of the armed resistance, Alessandro
Portelli, oral historian.
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The Book:The
Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans and the
Pope, by
Robert Katz, Simon & Schuster."Gripping...a poignant, dramatic
and definitive account of a tragic time" -- The New York
Times.
See other major reviews
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Telling it like it was ...
THE JEWS OF ITALY
Under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945, Joshua
D. Zimmerman (ed.), Cambridge University Press
"Challenging the myth of Italian benevolence during
the Fascist period, [eighteen] authors investigate the treatment of
Jews by Italians during the Holocaust, and the native versus foreign
roots of Italian fascist anti-Semitism. Essays collected in this volume
each illustrate a different aspect of Italian Jewry under Fascist and
Nazi rule." — from the publisher
Robert Katz's contribution
to the work represents his most extensive report on the long-withheld,
secret files of America's wartime intelligence.
Titled “The Möllhausen Telegram, The Kappler Decodes, and The Deportation
of the Jews of Rome: The New CIA-OSS Documents, 2000-2002," his 41-page
essay uncovers a startling paper trail. On one end, it leads directly
to Hitler's "instructions" to swoop down on Jews of Rome and dispatch
them to Auschwitz; and on the other, it reaches into the White House itself,
revealing the extent of Allied penetration of those very instructions.
Like the Vatican, Katz writes, "London and Washington were in a position
to warn the Roman Jews, yet maintained silence, mute witnesses to a preannounced
journey to a gas chamber."
Other contributors include Giorgio Fabre,
Liliana Picciotto Fargion, Michele Sarfatti, Alexander Stille and
Susan Zuccotti
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