We conducted an interview in the summer and autumn of 1991 with Dr Enrico Chaim Pajes, a Jewish Polish doctor who trained in Italy before World War II. Pajes was arrested when Italy entered the war in 1940. For the next three years he was rotated through various prisons. He witnessed the bombing of Campagna in 1943 and risked his life to treat the wounded. After the war he started a new life as the head of a medical clinic for Jewish displaced persons in Grottaferrata, in the suburbs of Rome. How did a Jew of Polish origin end up practising medicine in Italy for over 40 years? This oral history is the story of Enrico Pajes's life.
References
1.
See SpectorSFreundlichB, eds. Lost Jewish Worlds: The Communities of Grodno, Lida, Olkienki, Vishay. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1996.
2.
On Józef Pilsudski see ReddawayWF. Marshal Pilsudski. London: Routledge, 1939.
3.
On anti-Semitism in Poland see HellerC. On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977.
4.
On racial persecutions in Italy see CoenF. Italiani ed ebrei: come eravamo. Le leggi razziali del 1938. Genoa: Marietta, 1988;also ZuccottiS. The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecutions, Rescue, Survival. New York: Basic Books, 1987.
5.
On this theme see Di MeoA, ed. Cultura ebraica e cultura scientifica in Italia. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1994; also SegreD Vittorio. Memoirs of a Fortunate Jew. London: Peter Halban, 1998.
6.
On Wladyslaw Anders see SarnerH. General Anders and the Soldiers of the Second Polish Corps. Cathedral City, CA: Brunswick Press, 1997.
7.
On the history of the Jews interned in Campagna see PetroniG. Gli ebrei a Campagna durante il seconda conflitto mondiale. Eboli: Edizioni Comitato “Giovanni Palatucci” di Campagna, 2001. The author interviewed several direct witnesses, among them one of the guards, Remo Tagliaferri (not Mario, as Pajes remembered), who helped the internees escape.
