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Fondazione Azione Cattolica Scuola di Santità
CATHOLIC ACTION SCHOOL OF SANCTITY FOUNDATION
FUNDACIÓN ACCIÓN CATÓLICA ESCUELA DE SANTIDAD
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Fondazione Azione Cattolica Scuola di Santità
CATHOLIC ACTION SCHOOL OF SANCTITY FOUNDATION
FUNDACIÓN ACCIÓN CATÓLICA ESCUELA DE SANTIDAD
Pio XI

MEMORY DAY JANUARY 27, 2025

WITNESS CATHOLIC ACTION

Day of memory, Recurrence celebrated on January 27 to commemorate the extermination and persecution of the Jewish people and the Italian military and political deportees to the Nazi camps. The date commemorates the day when, in 1945, the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated. It was established by the 20 July 2000 no. 211, in accordance with the proposal made by the European Parliament.*

WITNESS CATHOLIC ACTION

We remember Remembrance Day with the witnesses of Catholic Action from various countries, who during the Second World War lived faithful to the Gospel to the point of giving their lives.

Antonio Seghezzi
May 21, 1945, Dachau (Germany)

He was accused of subversive activity and, in 1943, arrested by the Germans and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. From Verona, he was transferred to Munich and then, in 1944, to Kaisheim. After a brief period in the Löpsingen camp, a prison-factory, with the German criminals he was transferred back to Kaisheim because he was ill with tuberculosis. From there, finally, to the Dachau concentration camp, where he dies.

Enrico Bartoletti
1916-1976
Because of his open support for persecuted Jews, he was arrested on December 8, 1943 and then released with strong warnings and threats.

Cajetan Tantalus
1905-1947
Just among the nations
He is recognized among the Righteous of the Nations for having hidden a Jewish family in his house for 9 months, saving them from deportation.

Gideon and Flavio Corrà
March 18, 1945, Flossenburg (Germany)
April 1, 1945, Flossenburg (Germany)
Both mature a convinced anti-fascism and courageously testify to their faith, wearing the badge, praying the rosary.
On the night of November 22, 1944, in Salizzole, where they had taken refuge with relatives, they were arrested by the black brigades and transferred to the extermination camp of Flossenburg, in upper Bavaria. Their political internship numbers were KZ 34566 and KZ 34565. After a few weeks of torment, they ended their noble existence with invocations to the Virgin: Gideon on March 18, Passion Sunday, was twenty-five and Flavio on April 1945, XNUMX, the feast of Easter, he was twenty-eight years old; united to Christ, as in life, also in passion and death.

Gino Bartali
1914-2000
Just among the nations
During the war upheavals, in 1943-1944 he took on risky missions between the archbishopric of Florence and the Franciscan convent of Assisi, transporting (in the back pockets of his shirt or rolled up in the frame of his bicycle) precious papers for the expatriation of racially persecuted protected by cleverly forged identity documents.
Those companies, which remained ignored for a long time (because their protagonist avoided making any merit out of them) will be celebrated post-mortem in 2005 with the granting of the gold medal for civil merit by the President of the Republic and in 2013 with the recognition conferred on him by the State of Righteous Among the Nations Israel.

Josef Mayr Nusser
February 24, 1945, Erlangen (Germany)
After the armistice of 8 September 1943, the Germans commanded South Tyrol and enlisted all the men. So Josef finds himself enlisted in the ranks of the Schutz-Staffeln, the notorious SS fighters. On September 7, the young men are transferred to Konitz, Germany, to be trained for war. On October 4, 1944, they have to take the oath to Adolf Hitler's cause, but the recruit Josef Mayr Nusser asks to speak and, in an excited but decisive voice, says: "Mr Marshal, I cannot swear to this". And to the officer who asks him why, he replies: "For religious reasons." He is told to put his statement in writing: it is his death sentence.

Marcel Callo
March 19, 1945, Mauthausen (Germany)
On 19 March 1943 he was forced by the Nazis to work in Germany. In fact, since 1940 with the occupation of France, the Germans transfer workers to Germany for compulsory work in their factories.
In Germany, Marcel is in Thuringia, where he organizes Christian groups which he supports with advice and various initiatives. On April 19, 1944, together with eleven companions, he was arrested on charges of being "too Catholic".
Prisoners are whipped, bitten by police dogs, they are affected by gangrene, tuberculosis… and many die as a result. This fate also befell Marcel who, on March 19, 1945, was found dying in a latrine. Transferred to the infirmary, he dies assisted by another prisoner, a non-believer who would later convert, struck by Marcel's serene smile in the face of death. He's not 24 yet.

Odoardo Focherini
December 24, 1944, Hersbruck (Germany)
Just among the nations
Since 1942 he has been securing some Polish Jews. His massive work in favor of the persecuted, however, begins after 8 September 1943: asked for and obtained the consent and support of his wife Maria, Odoardo begins to make contact with trusted people and to weave the web of organizational aids that serve to obtain blank identity cards, fill them in with false data and take the persecuted to the border with Switzerland.
Due to his Catholic condition, he was arrested on 11 March 1944 and, after waiting in the concentration camp of Fossoli (Carpi) and then Gries (Bolzano), on 5 September 1944 he was transferred to Flossenburg, and then to Hersbruck . Here he dies due to a leg wound, which gives him severe septicemia.
In 1969 he was recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" by the State of Israel.

Stanislaw Staroweyski
12/13 April 1941, Dachau (Germany)
During the Second World War (June 19, 1940) he was arrested by the Gestapo and interned in Dachau. Here he supports the prisoners. Struck by hardship and illness, he died on the night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.

Teresio Olivelli
January 17, 1945, Hersbruck (Germany)
After the armistice, he refused to surrender to Hitler's troops and, on 9 September 1943, was captured and locked up in a prison camp in Innsbruck. He escaped from the camp and made contact with the Catholic Resistance in Brescia and with the National Liberation Committee. At the beginning of 1944, he founded the newspaper "Il ribelle", a manifesto of the moral revolt against fascism and its time, and wrote the Rebel's Prayer, considered the highest spiritual testimony of the entire Resistance. On 27 April 1944, he was arrested in Milan and, later, in August 1944, deported to the Gries concentration camp (Bz), then to Flossenburg in Bavaria and, finally, to Hersbruck. At the beginning of January 1945, while shielding a young Ukrainian, he was beaten to death.