No Act of Betrayal

Description

An accusation of betrayal in an Italian national newspaper made 30 years after the end of WWII set Rossella Levi on a mission to clear her father’s name. “Il Pomero,” Renato Levi, her father, was a Jew from Trieste, trained as a radio operator in the Italian Navy until the anti-Jewish race laws expelled him from service. Renato moved to France, enlisted to fight the Nazis, was captured in North Africa and then recruited by British Special Ops to link the Resistance in Tuscany by radio with the Allies. He became the radio operator for the clandestine radio operation in Florence known as Radio CORA, transmitting important intelligence for 6 months in 1944 until the Nazis raided the apartment being used by the partisans.

The leaders of Radio CORA were captured, tortured and executed. Other members were deported to the camps but some made dramatic escapes and continued to fight. Renato and his partner who coded the messages were not there when the raid occured and were able to continue the fight afterwards, securing another radio for the Resistance.

Renato’s father is killed in Auschwitz, his siblings survive in hiding and his older brother emigrated before the War to Palestine. Each dealt with the horrors of War in their own way to survive and none of their choices were an act of betrayal to their family, their faith, or the cause of freedom and the Resistance. Yet an accusation was made against Renato 30 years after the War by a powerful man who was a leader in the Tuscan Resistance. The survivors of Radio CORA rallied to Renato’s defense and through her deep research and discovery of key documents, Rossella Levi lays bare the false claim against her father once and for all time.