A Profile in Courage: Giuseppe Jona

 Courage is required to oppose fascism. Giuseppe Jona exemplified it.

Venice has been home to a Jewish population since the 14th century. By the 1940s they numbered about a thousand and most lived within the historic Ghetto, established in 1516. (There are various explanations for the origin of the word “ghetto” but agreement that it originated here, probably because the land on which Jews were enclosed was the site of an old foundry - “getto” in Italian.)

Sephardic Synagogue.jpg

Sephardic Synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto, beautifully restored and in regular use.

Jona was President of the Jewish Community of Venice, and soon after the Nazis occupied Venice (along with the rest of northern and central Italy) in September 1943, they demanded the names and addresses of all the Jews. To avoid exposing many Jews to persecution and likely death at Auschwitz Jona burned the records. He then took his own life.

Jona seat plate.jpg

Jona's seat in the Levantine (Mediterranean) Synagogue. There is also a memorial plaque on a wall in the Ghetto but it has deteriorated. The caption translates: "Illustrious clinician, master of rightness and goodness. In the very sad hour of persecution he held up the community of Venice with a high sense of dignity. And he poured in the treasures of his great soul to the ruin of Italy, to the new martyrdom of Israel he couldn’t survive."

While the community experienced many arrests, deportations and deaths, Jona’s heroism likely saved many lives. Burning the membership lists disrupted Nazi efforts to locate all Jewish residents, giving some additional time to go into hiding or escape. In all of Italy roughly 8,000 Jews were deported to Nazi death camps; only about 1,000–1,200 survived.

Giuseppe Jona’s act of self-sacrifice and resistance is remembered today. There is a memorial plaque in the Jewish Ghetto commemorating his sacrifice, and another on the wall of a new hospital wing (Jona Pavilion), where he was a pathologist and doctor for 40 years.

Holocaust memorial-cattle car.jpg

One of two powerful holocaust memorials in the Ghetto. This depicts Jews being herded into cattle cars. Behind the bars are the names of all those from the Ghetto who were murdered.

Venice today contains about 450 Jewish community members. Of the five historic synagogues in the Ghetto, two are regularly used and three used only for certain Jewish holy days.

Holocaust Memorial - Wall.jpg

2nd Holocaust Memorial wall with 7 bas relief sculptures

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