Few Americans realize that, during World War...

Few Americans realize that, during World War II, thousands of Italian bureaucrats, soldiers, clerics and common citizens defied their government and saved 85% of the country’s 45,000 Jewish citizens from extinction by the Nazis.

Indeed, according to historian Andrew M. Canepa, assistant director of the Italian Cemetery in Colma, outside San Francisco, “Until Germany occupied Italy, Italian military and civilian officials did not give one Jew under Italian authority--including occupied France, Croatia and Greece--over to the Nazis.” Italians stalled and lied, smuggling Jews out of the country and hiding them in stables, farmhouses, monasteries and convents.

These and other little-known facts about Italy and the Holocaust will come to light during a conference Sunday and Monday sponsored by the Italian government and the National Italian-American Foundation. Co-sponsors are the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers of the Anti-Defamation League.

Titled “Italians and Jews: Rescue and Aid During the Holocaust,” the conference at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel will feature talks by scholars, survivors and diplomats.

“Evidence of widespread rescue is well researched,” said conference director Maria Lombardi of the National Italian-American Foundation, “but not generally known by the public.”

Sam Oliner, a professor of sociology at Humboldt State University in Arcata, will discuss a study he conducted with his wife, Humboldt education professor Pearl Oliner. The couple, authors of “The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe,” found that Italian rescuers had universal and uniquely Italian motives, including a history of tolerance, a tendency of resistance to authority and a strong cultural emphasis on social responsibility.

“I don’t want to give the impression that everyone loved Jews and was hiding them,” Sam Oliner said, “but many people in leadership positions--priests, bishops, nuns--were involved in rescue. There are some beautiful stories. They set the tone.”

Canepa points out that politics were also a factor in the rescues. “Resisting the Nazi order to turn Jews over was the only way the Italian government could assert its independence from the policy of its overbearing German ally,” he said.

One Italian rescuer whose motives were altruistic was Giorgio Perlasca, a fascist who used his diplomatic authority to save Hungarian Jews. Lombardi estimates that Perlasca saved 10,000 Jews. At the conference the National Italian-American Foundation will present the first Giorgio Perlasca Humanitarian Award to Father Victor Salandini for his work with migrant workers in California.

The conference will take place from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Sunday and from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday. The speakers include historians Meir Michaelis of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, H. Stuart Hughes of UC San Diego and Menachem Shelah of Tel-Aviv University. For registration information, phone Serena Cantoni at (310) 275-5200.

DATES

The second annual Bread for the World Gospel Concert will be held at 8 p.m. Friday at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. Pastors Cecil L. Murray and Leonard Jackson of the First AME Church chair the event. Gospel musicians Andre Crouch and Sandra Crouch are honorary co-chairs.

Tramaine Hawkins will appear, as will the Bread for the World Mass Choir, and choirs of the Community Presbyterian Church of Los Angeles, Christian Methodist Episcopal Community Church, Christ Memorial Church of God in Christ of Pacoima, Faithful Central Missionary Baptist Church, among others. Sinbad Dawnn Lewis, Kim Fields, Pat Harvey, Larry Carroll and Paula McClure are slated to appear. Proceeds go to feed poor people in South-Central Los Angeles and call attention to world hunger. Tickets are $22.50 to $50. For information, call (818) 568-3233.

“Growing Strong at the Broken Places,” a seminar on healing and hope in the stressful 1990s, will be given Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30 and 31, at Bel-Air Presbyterian Church. Jim Smoke, pastor and author, will speak about picking up the pieces in failed relationships, jobs, family and health. Admission is $20 in advance, or $25 at the door. The hours are 7:30-9:30 p.m. Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. The address is 16221 Mulholland Drive, Los Angeles. (818) 597-0713.

HONORS

Theologian John B. Cobb Jr. has received a 1992 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order. The Avery professor of religion at the Claremont Graduate School and director of the Center for Process Studies will receive $150,000 from the University of Louisville, which presents the award each year to the author of a work that presents ideas that will be vital to world order in the future. Cobb and Herman Daly wrote “For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future.”

Sister Magdalen Coughlin, chancellor of Mt. St. Mary’s College, will be honored at the Women of Excellence luncheon at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel on Thursday, hosted by the Western Los Angeles City Council of Boy Scouts of America. Proceeds from the luncheon will benefit the council’s Handicapable Scouting Program. Phone (818) 784-4BSA.

GRANTS

The Paul Eubene Lee Memorial Scholarship has been created within the Korean Endowment Fund at the School of Theology at Claremont by Lisa H. Lee, the mother of a youth who was electrocuted July 30 while attending Seoul National University’s summer school in Korea. Paul, who was Lee’s only child, had wanted to become a doctor to help the poor. Co-chairmen of the endowment fund, the Rev. Dae Hee Park and John H. Chang, have initiated a five-year campaign to raise $1 million in scholarship funds.

Please address notices to: Southern California File, c/o Religion Editor, Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, Ca. 90053. To receive consideration, an item must be brief and arrive at least three weeks prior to the event announced.