From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is.

Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life.

There were no tourists in Rome these days. Just Germans, beleaguered Italians, and the Catholic Church. Just war, hunger, hopelessness, and death.

This only happened 79 yrs ago! May we never forget.

But that is what I struggle with most, knowing what his will really is. Not his will according to the Catholic Church, but his will.”

When the first American trucks and tanks rolled into town, people didn’t stay inside. They danced in the streets. It was a strange sight, really. Italians, who had allied themselves with a ruthless dictator and fought and died beside Germany’s sons, were welcoming the Americans into their capital city.

When German tanks and troops had descended on Rome a mere nine months before, people had died trying to keep them out. It said a great deal about the feelings of the Italian people, about their resentment for being drafted into a war very few of them wanted, made to fight and die for preposterous goals and ridiculous men.

Of the roughly twelve hundred Jews deported from Rome in the October roundup that the Sonninos and I narrowly escaped, over eight hundred were immediately gassed. Of those who were admitted into the camp, one woman and forty-seven men survived. Forty-eight people out of twelve hundred.

Eighty percent of Italy’s Jews survived the war, a marked contrast to the eighty percent of Europe’s Jews who did not.

Rabbi Nathan Cassuto was the spiritual leader of the Jews in Florence in 1943, when the Germans occupied Italy. His story both inspired and haunted me. He showed incredible leadership and courage and survived Auschwitz only to die in February of 1945 in a forced death march at the hands of his captors. He was thirty-six years old when he died, and showed more fortitude, grace, and strength in his young life than most will ever exhibit. I dedicated the book to him. The world owes a debt of gratitude to people like Monsignor O’Flaherty and Rabbi Cassuto,