Rufino Niccacci

Father Rufino Niccacci (d. 1977) was a Franciscan friar and priest who sheltered Jewish refugees in Assisi, Italy in World War II from September 1943 through June 1944.

In 1943, Niccacci was the Father Guardian of the Franciscan Monastery of San Damiano in Assisi. At the direction of Bishop Placido Nicolini and Aldo Brunacci, secretary to the bishop and chairman of the Committee to Aid Refugees, Niccacci provided Jews with false identities and gave them sanctuary in monasteries and convents.

After the war, Niccacci established a small settlement for destitute Christian and Jewish families in Montenero, outside of Assisi, and served as a parish priest in his home town of Deruta, Italy. [Yours Is a Precious Witness: Memoirs of Jews and Catholics in Wartime Italy By Margherita Marchione, Published 1997, Paulist Press, ISBN 0809104857, at pp. 85-86.]

In April 1974, Yad Vashim in Israel named him as one of the Righteous among Nations. [http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/gallery/pg47/pg0/pg47071.html] [Yala Korwin, "What really happened in Assisi in 1943-1944?," Midstream, April, 2002 at http://goliath.ecnext.com/free-scripts/document_view_v3.pl?item_id=0199-1835451&format_id=XML]

On April 11, 1983, President Ronald Reagan, in remarks to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, said,

The picturesque town of Assisi, Italy, sheltered and protected 300 Jews. Father Rufino Niccacci organized the effort, hiding people in his monastery and in the homes of parishioners. A slip of the tongue by a single informant could have condemned the entire village to the camps, yet they did not yield. [ [http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=41171 Ronald Reagan: Remarks to the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors ] ]

Niccacci's home town of Deruta, Italy has named a street Via Padre Rufino Niccacci in his honor. [Google Maps for Via Padre Rufino Niccacci, 06053 Deruta PG, Italy]

Niccacci was a subject and the narrator of "The Assisi Underground", a book written in 1978 by Alexander Ramati about Assisi's efforts to save Jewish refugees. [Alexander Ramati, The Assisi Underground--The Priests Who Saved Jews. New York: Stein and Day, 1978.] In 1985, the book was made into a movie of the same title. More recently, the story of the Assisi underground is the subject of an Italian novel, La società delle mandorle: Come Assisi salvò i suoi ebrei (2007) by Mirti Paolo.

[Do Unto Others: Extraordinary Acts of Ordinary People By Samuel P. Oliner, published 2003, Westview Press, ISBN 0813339847, at pp. 238-39.]

[The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue, and Survival By Susan Zuccotti, Published 1996, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 0803299117, at pp. 214-15.]