One woman's discovery---and the incredible, unexpected journey it takes her on---of how her grandparent's small village of Campagna, Italy, help... read full description
reviews
Aug 04, 2010
Hattie
rated it: 
It Happened in Italy by Elizabeth Bettina
It Happened In Italy by Elizabeth Bettina, is a missing part of Italian and Jewish History. Campagna, Ferramonti and other remote Italian towns were places where Jewish people did not experience the horrors of Dachau or Auschwitz. Therefore, the words “concentration camps” were never used by the carabiniere. Some of the rescued people likened their lives to living in a “hotel.”
In these Italian villages the Jewish people went to syn More...
It Happened In Italy by Elizabeth Bettina, is a missing part of Italian and Jewish History. Campagna, Ferramonti and other remote Italian towns were places where Jewish people did not experience the horrors of Dachau or Auschwitz. Therefore, the words “concentration camps” were never used by the carabiniere. Some of the rescued people likened their lives to living in a “hotel.”
In these Italian villages the Jewish people went to syn More...
Jun 11, 2010
rjp316
rated it: 
I loved the concept of this book. It was fascinating to learn that Italy actually had concentration/internment camps during WWII. These camps were thousands of times better than the concentration camps in Germany and elsewhere where millions of Jews died. In Italy – the prisoners were allowed to walk the streets, play soccer, get married, kept their own closes and even pray and attend service at the synagogue. This was about those prisoners and those courageous Italians who risked everything
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Jun 21, 2009
Maltaise
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It Happened in Italy tells the story of little known part of history during World War II, about the Jewish population in Italy. While this aspect of the story is quite interesting and not a subject that I was familiar with the book itself is average at best. Bettina became fascinated with the Jewish population in Italy after seeing a photo with a rabbi, priest, and police officers together. What she saw in this photo led her to research how this could be.
Campagna, Ferramonti and More...
Campagna, Ferramonti and More...
Jun 19, 2009
Diane
rated it: 
Don't let the title fool you; It Happened in Italy is not a chick-lit book. The subtitle, Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust, gives the reader a better idea of the substance of this non-fiction book.
Told in simple style by author Elizabeth Bettina, it recounts her discovery of how Jewish people fled to Italy from Germany to escape the Nazi regime, and were hidden by many courageous Italians, one of whom, Giovanni Palatucci, was sent to a Ge More...
Told in simple style by author Elizabeth Bettina, it recounts her discovery of how Jewish people fled to Italy from Germany to escape the Nazi regime, and were hidden by many courageous Italians, one of whom, Giovanni Palatucci, was sent to a Ge More...
Jun 20, 2009
Dave
rated it:
Elizabeth Bettina’s “It Happened in Italy” is a difficult book for me to rate and review. On the one hand you have an incredibly interesting story and a likeable person in Elizabeth Bettina, and on the other hand, you have a narrative that goes all over the place; sometimes telling the story of the Holocaust in Italy and how many Italians protected Jews and other times telling you the story of how Elizabeth Bettina learned about the story, and still other sections in which the author tells us h
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May 26, 2009
Weavre
rated it:
Learning about the history of the Holocaust has always seemed more important than enjoyable, something I feel I ought to do rather than something I really want to do. This book is different. In fact, I'd even recommend it as a great summer "beach read". Uplifting, positive, lighthearted, and filled with true stories of human goodness, it's not like any other Holocaust history I've ever seen.
For anyone weighed down with knowledge of the Milgram experiments and the atrocitie More...
For anyone weighed down with knowledge of the Milgram experiments and the atrocitie More...
Sep 12, 2009
Violet
rated it:
Rating: 2.5 rounded to 2
It happened in Italy shows a different side to Holocaust and the concentrations camps. Only the camps mentioned in this book are not located in Germany but in Italy. I don’t know about others, but I had no idea there were concentration camps in Italy. Neither did author Elizabeth Bettina.
The research starts when the author discovers her Catholic parents wedding photographs outside a church with a priest standing next to a Rabbi. Since the author’s More...
It happened in Italy shows a different side to Holocaust and the concentrations camps. Only the camps mentioned in this book are not located in Germany but in Italy. I don’t know about others, but I had no idea there were concentration camps in Italy. Neither did author Elizabeth Bettina.
The research starts when the author discovers her Catholic parents wedding photographs outside a church with a priest standing next to a Rabbi. Since the author’s More...
Jun 24, 2009
Donna
rated it:
The Holocaust: a monstrous time in the world’s history. Yet, the people of one country stood against the death and destruction, quietly saving Jews from slaughter. It Happened in Italy tells the stories of survivors and those who helped them. Many Italians opened their hearts and homes, putting their lives at risk, for their neighbors and refugees from other countries.
From the moment I opened this book, I was captivated by the stories Elizabeth Bettina uncovered. Her journey began wi More...
From the moment I opened this book, I was captivated by the stories Elizabeth Bettina uncovered. Her journey began wi More...
Jun 19, 2009
Dymphna
rated it:
It Happened in Italy>/i> by Elizabeth Bettina tells the important story of the kind and dignified treatment of the Jews living in Italy during World War II by the Italians. It is a story that needs to be told and archived for history's sake and sheds a glimmer of hope in an era of heinous world wide crime against humanity. The humane treatment of the Jews by the Italians during this time says a lot about Italian culture and values and those of the Church. The stark contrast with Germany an
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May 07, 2009
Renee
rated it:
It Happened in Italy is the untold stories of how the people of Italy defied the horrors of the holocaust. Bettina (the author) discovers the story of Giovanni Palatucci and his connection to her family's village of Campagna,Italy. Palatucci was an Italian that had access to records of Italy's foreign residents. Instead of using the information (including their religion) to turn them in to be exterminated in Germany, he makes the choice to protect them in camps throughout southern Italy (one of
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Jul 15, 2010
Gale
rated it:
The book was written in a warm easy to read style with short chapters. The survivor's recollections, documents and photographs were interesting and deserving of preservation. But I came away feeling like something was missing. It seemed the focus of the book was more on how the author researched the stories and gathered her information.
The short anecdotes from the survivors were mostly about the gratitude they felt towards the people of Italy. I wanted to know more about the survivors pre More...
The short anecdotes from the survivors were mostly about the gratitude they felt towards the people of Italy. I wanted to know more about the survivors pre More...
May 27, 2009
Joe
rated it:
I’m not the kind of person who can talk to just anyone. I make friends fairly easy, but in a crowded room where I don’t know anyone, I’m more likely to grab a drink, open a book, and keep to myself (which is why the idea of “networking lunches” at conferences makes me nauseous). It’s not that I don’t like people. I do. And I genuinely enjoy talking and getting to know them and making connections. I’m just not very comfortable forcing it. I’m better at it when it happens naturally — or naturally
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Sep 28, 2009
Marciliogq
rated it:
The book tells us the Holocaust story through a completely different view of the conventional history about Jews. We are used to read or hear about the Nazi fields in Germany then we are challenged to a really opposite reality. Jews in Italy are treated in a complete special way, far from stripped pajamas as prisoners and from the mistreats and punishment received in Holocaust. The author takes a familiar story and from point establishes a much more profound investigation about the Second World
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May 16, 2009
Ruth
rated it:
It Happened in Italy is a wonderful story but a very mediocre book. The author, Elizabeth Bettina, an American of Italian descent learns that Italian Jews were interned in her ancestral town during WWII. What's more, she learned that, other than the lack of freedom, life in that camp, and other Italian concentration camps, wasn't that bad. In short, while the Jews were confined, they were not mistreated until Mussolini fell and the Nazi's started deporting the Italian Jews. Even then, they were
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Feb 06, 2011
Deigh
rated it: 
This is simply an awful book. I could not plow through any more of it than the first 100 pages. It is a very important story of love and courage in Italy during WWII but the author in her attempt to be cute and folksy ends up being trite and self serving and thus trivializes an important story. The book is filled with nonsense put in to make her look cute and the real information is scattered in bits and pieces. The story is greatand heroic but there really is not enough of it to make a book
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Jan 17, 2010
Annamaria
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The story gets 5 stars-- the writing gets 1 star so I gave the book three stars. This is a compelling and, unknown to many, story of jhow ordianry Italians saved thousands of Jews during World War II. It really is an unbelievable story AND it is really unbelivably poorly written. The author's favorite punctuation mark is an exclamation point (!) It is worth picking up an skimming through it because the story is truly compelling. This should have been a New Yorker piece because then it would have
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Oct 15, 2009
Carole
rated it:
"I always told Fred that he had a picnic in Italy. I said to him, 'You complained that sometimes you had too much soup, while I was lucky to get a few spoons of some dirty water,' " recalled Edith Moskovitch Birns. Edith is a survivor of Auschwitz, while the man who would become her husband, Alfred (Fred) Birns, survived the Holocaust in Italy.
For me, these opening lines sum up the theme of this amazing and almost unheard of story. Compared to the millions of Jews More...
For me, these opening lines sum up the theme of this amazing and almost unheard of story. Compared to the millions of Jews More...
Jan 25, 2012
Elizabeth Bettina is an Italian-American Catholic who spent her childhood summers with relatives in Campagna, Italy. During one visit as an adult, she discovered that Jews had been interned in Campagna during the war. She was fascinated by this, wondered why it wasn't talked about, and proceeded to become deeply involved in finding people who had been interned, telling their story and taking them back to the places where they had been. This should have been an absolutely riveting book. It's not.
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Jul 01, 2010
Louise
rated it:
I found this book very interesting about Italy during WWII. The author spent many summers as a child visiting relatives in a small village in Italy. As an adult she discovered that during the war residence in this village defied the Nazis and risked their lives to save hundred of Jews during the Holocaust. The book follows her research into what happened in Italy and the stories of the people who greatly appreciated that the Italians treated them like family.
Apr 27, 2010
Annie
rated it:
I had no idea that there were concentration camps in Italy during World War II. I also had no idea that the Jews in Italy lived through World War II. This collection of stories, a written account of the verbal history no one seems to know, facinated me. I have to wonder how much my grandparents knew, or could have told me, if I'd only known to ask.
Jan 13, 2012
Carly
rated it:
The only thing that saves this book from a one-star rating is the novelty of the subject. Learning about the Jews in Italy brought to attention a part of history that is not well known. However, the number of pages that is about that part if history probably take up one tenth of the book, with the rest being all about the author. This book felt very selfish, given that it Aa supposed to be about others.
May 21, 2011
Bethany
rated it:
The story is a special story, one I did not know exsisted until this book. The writing however leaves something to be desired. Bettina often jumps around. Much of the book is focused on the author herself and her feelings about what is happening.
Mar 11, 2011
Gina
rated it:
This is a part of history that I knew little about. The author provided a glimpse into a different kind of Holocaust survivors. It’s about how there were many Italians who helped the Jewish population living in Italy during the war. It’s also a story of goodness amidst a time of evil.
As the author states in her book…”the saving of Jews in Italy gives hope to all that during bad times, there can still be good people.”
It was a fascinating read.
As the author states in her book…”the saving of Jews in Italy gives hope to all that during bad times, there can still be good people.”
It was a fascinating read.
Nov 06, 2010
Susan
rated it:
It was very interesting reading about the stories of the holocaust survivors depicted in this book. It was wonderful to read some positive stories surrounding this time period. I had no previous knowledge of the "internment camps" in Italy - how fascinating to learn of this bit of history. I found thier stories touching and heartwarming and uplifting. Some of the writing is very repetitious and somewhat disjointed, but still very interesting. I would love to read more about other survi
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May 13, 2010
Signora
rated it:
Incredible story of how the Italians protected and saved many Jews in Italy during WWII. I learned much!
Sep 23, 2009
Emily
rated it:
Awesome history, but a poorly written book. Fabulous history, though, about how well the Jews treated by the Italians during WWII.
Feb 11, 2012
Lisa
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I was really excited to read this book, but was disappointed in the end. What started out as a great book idea, was buried under useless information, bad writing and too much back-patting.
Aug 18, 2011
Eulee
rated it:
One of my favorite books. I highly recommend this book. It shows how even though in a time of darkness there are still people who know how to do the right thing, it truly gives you hope.
