![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/feb-28-books.28.Sarano-book-cover.jpeg\")
<\/a>Originally published in 2017 by noted Italian publishing house Edizioni San Paolo, in Milan, We Are Here! We Are Alive!<\/i> garnered wide praise in Italy\u2019s general press and from the country\u2019s leading officials and public figures.<\/p>\nIt must be accented that first-person Holocaust memoirs were usually written after<\/i> the war, and the memoirist had to choose from past events and sort them out in the calm of peace time. A diary like this, composed in situ<\/i>, while in hiding, is rather rare \u2013 and likely more reliable than one written with the fluidity of memory after events.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the story of how this chapter of the history of Italian Jewry unfolded, which I experienced day by day,\u201d writes Sarano. Kept for more than 70 years in a drawer by his daughters Matilde, Vittoria and Miriam, Sarano\u2019s diary reemerges from the past, adding new, precious pages of history to the record of the genocide of the Jewish people.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n We Are Here! We Are Alive!<\/i> is the result of Mazzoli\u2019s research, the Italian literary scholar who brought Sarano\u2019s diary to light, placing it in the historical context of the time. The book accents the heroism of Sarano, who portrays himself humbly and with modesty. Yet, he was the farsighted secretary of the Milan Jewish community, the man who saved thousands of lives by hiding from the occupying Germans the lists of community members. The fact that he knew the entire list by heart, names and addresses, bore heavily on Sarano, and he realized he would have to escape detection by the Germans for the safety of the entire community.<\/p>\n The Germans relied thoroughly on these communal lists in various cities for their roundups and deportation of all known Jews to the death camps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n One tragic incident revolves around the Venice list. When the Germans came, they ordered the president of the Jewish community, Giuseppe Jona, to hand over the list. He quickly found a secure place to hide it and then committed suicide before the Germans could get to him.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In Sarano\u2019s diary, we also learn about, and take joy with, the Jewish soldiers from the Land of Israel who fought the Germans in Italy during the Second World War as members of the Jewish Brigade, and helped save countless Jewish lives.<\/p>\n In his introduction, Mazzoli describes the fascinating background as to how this remarkable book came to be written. It is the combination of persistence, good luck and serendipity.<\/p>\n Mazzoli had been looking for information about a good-hearted Nazi officer, Erich Eder, who, in 1944, when the German army had already occupied northern Italy, had at great risk disobeyed orders and helped save local refugees, including Jews, from deportation. Mazzoli had read a few details in a memoir written by an Italian friar and wanted to contact Eder, but in vain.<\/p>\n Then, through a series of coincidences, he ran across the three Sarano sisters and learned about their father\u2019s diary. It is here that Mazzoli learned more about the humane German officer, whose family back home in Bavaria had also saved a Jewish woman by hiding her in their house.<\/p>\n When the Sarano sisters became acquainted with Mazzoli, they entrusted him with their father\u2019s precious manuscript with the touching words, \u201cThese pages have been waiting for you.\u201d And then Mazzoli spent several years reading and notating\u00a0<\/span>the diary.<\/p>\n In We Are Here! We Are Alive!<\/i>, we learn how ordinary peasants and kindly friars in the small town of Mambroccio and other places were able to thwart the Nazi plan of total annihilation of the Jews by hiding them in remote villages and sustaining them until liberation. There is even a moving description of how the Sarano family, with the help of the villagers, was able to celebrate a seder while in hiding.<\/p>\n Sarano served for decades as the secretary of the Milan Jewish community, until he made aliyah in 1969. That year, some 25 years after the events, in the town of Bnei Brak (near Tel Aviv), a memorable, emotional reunion took place, when Padre Sante Raffaelli, the friar who was instrumental in saving the family, visited the Saranos.<\/p>\n We Are Here! We Are Alive!<\/i> is a must-read, enthralling book. It is so beautifully translated from the Italian by Kelman that one would think this diary was originally written in English.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Curt Leviant<\/b>\u2019s most recent novels are <\/i>Tinocchia: The Adventures of a Jewish Puppetta and T<\/i>he Woman Who Looked Like Sophia L.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We Are Here! We Are Alive! The Diary of Alfredo Sarano, with historical commentary by Roberto Mazzoli and translated from the Italian by Avigayil Diana Kelman, is a book of double magnitude. We Are Here! We Are Alive! is a riveting diary, with fiction-like suspense and drama, written in northern Italy during the Second World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[23853,23854,53,4526,23855],"class_list":["post-46044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-alfredo-sarano","tag-avigayil-diana-kelman","tag-holocaust","tag-memoir","tag-roberto-mazzoli"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}