Beneath a scarlet sky

I'm not sure how I became aware of this book; I suspect that it popped up when I was looking for books whose action took place around Milan and/or Como. Whatever the source, I have spent the past week reading it on the Kobo. 

Initially I was put off by the introduction that begins "In early February 2006, I was forty-seven and at the lowest point of my life." I've read books that start like this before, where the "I" is a character, the narrator of the book, and not the author herself. I was therefore somewhat dubious about this introduction and didn't read it too closely.

The story itself is that of a 17 year old youth from Milan, beginning in June 1943. Italy was occupied by the Germans (if I recall correctly, the Italian army had surrendered by this time, but doing so only caused more Germans to flow into Italy), and when the book begins, the first bombing raid of the Allies on Milan takes place. The protagonist, Pino Lella, is sent to a retreat, Casa Alpina, in the far north of Italy, initially in order to evade the bombing, but he is soon put to work by the priest running the retreat/summer school, whereby he learns various paths in the hills about the retreat. I realised before Lella did that he was learning these paths in order to escort Jews out of Italy and into Switzerland.

After several months of this activity, he is warned by his parents that his 18^th birthday is about to happen, and when it does, he will be conscripted into the army. He is thus advised to volunteer and by pulling strings, he gets into the Organization Todt, the German military engineering organisation whose job in Italy appears to be building defensive positions for the army and for extracting various resources from the locals. By a series of events that seem to be more fictional than fact, Lella becomes the chauffeur of the Todt General in Italy, Major General Hans Leyers.

Levers travels around northern Italy, driven by Lella who takes as many covert notes as he can that are then passed on to the Allies. Towards the end of the book, set in late April 1945 (i.e. the end of the war), Levers - who was arrested by Lella but apparently had cut some deal with the Americans - calls Lella by his partisan codename, "Observer". Whilst this does Lella's head in, it is never explained.

Is the story real? The pre-introduction states "Though based on a true story and real characters, this a work of fiction and of the author’s imagination." There has been a great deal of discussion about the truth in this novel - see here and here.

Does it matter? Author Mark Sullivan states at the beginning that this is fiction based on fact, and so can be seen as similar to most of the books written by Robert Harris - historical novels based on fact (most of them are 20^th century histories). Taken as a story, it is very gripping and also informs on a part of the 2nd World War that is not so well known. 

The roles of the Catholic priest in Casa Alpina and the Cardinal of Milan in saving Jewish lives was not known to me (and seems surprising) but apparently the priest, Father Re, was named to the “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor given by Yad VaShem, the Israeli World Holocaust remembrance center, to those who selflessly risked their own lives to save Jews. This is something that I can easily check: the Yad VaShem website lists 766 Italians; there is no Re on that list, neither is seminarian Giovanni Barbareschi (mentioned several times in the book) nor Cardinal Schuster. Of course, these may be pseudonyms. 

The Wikipedia page about General Levers tells a different story to that of the book's, including that Levers provided assistance to his neighbor, Ginevra (Bedetti) Masciadri (recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations on October 13, 2004). The Wiki article ends with the sobering note: researchers and historians refute the author's casting and reimagination of Leyers in the role of an antagonist in command of the Organization Todt operating group in Italy, and several details and accusations about the role of both Leyers and Organization Todt operations in Italy established as ahistorical and inauthentic, casting a shadow that a number of details in the story told by the book were fabricated by its author.

As a book, this is a very gripping story, and should be taken as such. But as fact, probably much less so.

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