Italy's 'Oskar Schindler' to be taken off the list

Oskar Schindler during the Second World War.

He has long been praised as an "Italian Schindler", venerated for saving thousands of Jews from the Nazis before paying the price for his bravery in a concentration camp.

But the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is now removing Giovanni Palatucci from its exhibits while other leading Jewish institutions and the Vatican are reviewing their recognition for his actions after research claimed he was a zealous Nazi collaborator.

The wartime police official in the Italian city of Fiume had been honoured for helping 5,000 Jews avoid deportation, earning him comparisons to Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who protected Jewish workers and their families. Champions of Palatucci, who later died in Dachau, are campaigning for him to be made a saint and have denounced the claims.

Scholars working with an Italian Jewish research group in New York have identified what they call the "myth" of his role during World War II after studying Italian and German records. The Centro Primo Levi at the Centre for Jewish Studies concluded that Palatucci co-operated with German forces in the round-up of Jews to be sent to Auschwitz.

His supposed actions were invented by his family and eagerly accepted by the Italian state and Catholic Church, they believe.

Palatucci did die at Dachau, but was sent there after falling out with the Nazis in an unrelated dispute, not for protecting Jews, the research says. "There is an enormous contrast between the reality of what happened in Fiume during the war and the legend of Giovanni Palatucci," said Natalia Indrime, the centre's director.

Alexander Stille, a Columbia University journalism professor from an Italian Jewish family who has reviewed the centre's investigation, said Palatucci was the beneficiary of a "much-needed feel-good story in Italy after the war".

Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial, said it was examining the findings. The institution named him "Righteous Among the Nations", one of the highest honours for non-Jews, in 1990. A Vatican source said Palatucci's possible beatification and canonisation was now under review.

Rolando Balugani, of the Giovanni Palatucci Association, said the report ignored dozens of witness statements by Jews who said he saved them.