Roma arrival

Today we travelled from Ottawa to Montreal to Rome. We were all packed and prepared to leave. Met with the dog sitter, puppies were a little confused with the luggage and this person who appeared to be now in charge. So they of course wanted to be cuddled and petted, we obliged and gave them little biscuits, which always helps a lot. We did take a lot of arrangements for their well being. Taxi took us to the Bus depot in Ottawa, a place I do not recommend, it is derelict, Grey Hound should be ashamed, it has not been updated since 1980 and looks it. They make a parody of security measures none of which are implemented and this after a string of gruesome and deadly incidents on their buses. The trip on a broken down bus to the P.E.Trudeau Airport (formely Dorval) Montreal took two hours.

The airport in Montreal has changed a lot in the last 10 years, I remember Dorval as it was then known in the days of the DC8 when flying anywhere was a luxury and exotic. It had one restaurant the Kebec and the menu was prime roastbeef and a huge buffet. People would come and have a huge festive meal prior to their flight. It was very nice and the food was wonderful. The airport today is many times the size it was then, we went for a bite to eat at the U Bar, the light changes from blue to red to white with the music, the food is good and they have good wines. Our flight on Air Transat left on time. This is the second time we take this airline, they brought us back from Rome in 2011. Good service and a pleasant flight, they do not serve a full meal on the evening flight which takes off after 9 PM, a good idea since most people do not have the stomach for a full meal late at night. The light also in the cabin is shade a light blue which is very pleasant, then it turns to soft pink, more relaxing to help you sleep. There is an attention to small details, including the bread buns and at breakfast nice hot cinnamon buns, good coffee and the fruits were very fresh.

The flight was wonderful and we arrived at Fiumicino-Rome Airport 90 minutes ahead of time and got our luggage in 10 minutes, unheard of really. Shaving that much time on a flight is wonderful.

 The view from our room at Baylon Suites in Trastevere.

 On the old bridge from Trastevere to the Isola on the Tiber
which has been used as hospital island since antiquity. The temple to Aesclepius has been 
replaced by the basilica to Saint Bartholomew (skinned alive).

Ponte Rotto (broken bridge) next to the Palatine bridge.

Looking towards the Gianicolo Hill 

It was wonderful to see the Pines of Rome, those great big umbrella like trees everywhere you look.

When we arrived at our B&B we had a shower and then slept for a few hours. Around 4 pm we went out for a coffee on Piazza Piscinula at Bar Marcucci, the waiter recognized us and greeted us like long lost friends, it was such a pleasure. The coffee Espresso and a Tramenzino (white bread sandwich with white cheese and ham toasted hot).

Next to the bar is a small 4 century AD Church San Benedetto in Piscinula currently housing the statue of the Virgin of Fatima. The statue has been brought to Rome for a few days and is said to be miraculous. It is guarded by a Confraternity who wear highly polished riding boots and a uniform of a penitent knight. The Virgin statue is only a painted plaster statue not very nice looking but of immense importance in the RC Church. The Pope himself blessed the statue in St-Peter's square and thousands of pilgrims came to see it.

We then crossed over to the Rome side of the City by using the antique bridge over the Tiber river and walked into the old Jewish ghetto at the Portico d'Ottavia and the Teatro di Marcello area. The swallows by their thousands were circling above as they do in Rome at this time of the year. It is an incredible spectacle to see at sunset. We had dinner at the Old Taverna of the Ghetto, a favourite of ours. Jewish food in Rome has nothing to do with the European Jewish food known in North America. In Rome most recipes date from Antiquity from the time of Herod and as the Roman Jews say ''We have been here for 3000 years so we got stories to tell. We also went to see two renovated temples in the Forum Boarium near the Arc of Janus, one is the Temple of Virtue Virilis and the other of Hercules often called Vestale temple because it is round but there is no connection at all. The temples have been under renovation for at least 25 years and the final results are beautiful, considering that the building are at least 2200 years old.

 Temple of Virtue Virilis

 Temple of Hercule 

Fountain of the Tritone and the Church where is located the Boca della Verita

Fountain of the Turtles

Prior to our dinner we walked in the old ghetto to the Fountain of the Turtles my favourite and on Piazza Campitelli we went into the Church of Santa Maria al Portico della Piazza Campitelli. There is a shrine there to the patron Saint of Pharmacist, San Giovanni Leonardi.
The bells of the church were pealing as it was the end of Vespers. On Sunday night most churches are open for Vespers and at this time of the year only the immediate area where the service is held is lighted, the rest is in total darkness. I had a scotch and water at a Pub prior to dinner, love it for $7 dollars you get 2 oz of single malt scotch, now that is a drink. Served with 3 small pieces of 70% dark chocolate, goes very well together take my word for it.

Scotch single malt and 70% chocolate

After dinner we walked back to our B&B and will try to recuperate now.

Books I read lately

Lately I have read 4 books on people who lived at the same time during one specific period of history in different countries, Canada, the UK, Germany and Poland, the period 1930 to 1948.
The books are; King: William Lyon Mackenzie King, A life, by Allan Levine, A daughter's tale: the Memoir of Winston Churchill's daughter, by Mary Soames, Letters from Berlin: A story of war and survival by Kerstin Lieff and Fifteen Journeys Warsaw to London by Jasia Reichardt.

As a complement to those books, years ago I read 2 memoirs of the Princesses Marie and Tatiana Vassiltchikoff who were born in St-Petersburg before the revolution and whose father was attached to the Household of Czar Nicholas II.
The family escaped Russia in 1918 on a warship sent by King George V to rescue his Russian relatives and they settled in Germany.

Both Marie and Tatiana will work as secretaries at the German Foreign Ministry for many years and will become involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, barely escaping arrest out of shear luck. Their books, The Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 by Marie and A purgatory of fools by Tatiana gives their account of Berlin and Germany under the Nazi dictatorship and their comments on some of the Nazi high officials they met in the course of their work.
At the end of the war Marie will marry an Englishman and move to the UK while Tatiana will marry Prince Paul Metternich-Winneburg and live out her life at Joannisberg Palace, her Wine Estate in Southern Germany.

I love this passage from Princess Tatiana's book; When all was over, we learnt that horror was not the sum of human experience. Those who survived would only remember the flashes of light in the darkness: the warm comradeship, the selfless gesture of love or courage which seemed the last reality in a world gone mad, where finally simplicity and gentleness remained the only valid sounds in a man's heart.


While living in Warsaw, I read around 1999 a book by a famous German media personality, Countess Marion Dönhoff, entitled Une enfance en Prusse Orientale. Her family is famous since the Middle-Ages, an old Aristocratic Prussian family, linked to Frederic II the Great of Prussia. She was for many decades the Editor and Publisher of the liberal weekly DIE ZEIT, her nickname was la Contesse démocrate. She was closely associated with the war time history of Germany, involved in the plot in 1944 to assassinate Hitler. Her book is wonderful to read, it gives an impression of life in old Prussia on her family estate in Koenigsberg today Kaliningrad. I remember writing to her after reading her book and getting a very nice reply from her. At the end of the war she rode her horse from Eastern Prussia all the way to Hamburg, an incredible distance, fleeing the advancing Soviet army. Near Berlin she stopped at the estate of the Bismarck family in Varzin, Pomerania and spent just a few hours. She tried to convince the aged great grand daughter of the Chancellor to flee with her. The old lady pointed to the garden of the Chateau and said, I am very old, I would not get far and I asked my gardener to dig my grave, so that if the Soviets shoot me, they can bury me quickly.

Here is one quote from Countess Dönhoff's book on the futility of revenge; I also do not believe that hating those who have taken 
over one's homeland...necessarily demonstrates love
for the homeland. When I remember the woods and
lakes of East Prussia, its wide meadows and old shaded
avenues, I am convinced that they are still as
incomparably lovely as they were when they were my
home. Perhaps the highest form of love is losing without
possessing.

These books got me interested in what it was like to live under the Nazi regime, they tell their individual story which is quite different from the usual story about that period. As life goes it was a messy time and nothing was simple, some Germans were fooled into believing that since they were a law abiding society, governed by processes, nothing bad could happen, until it did.


What I find also very interesting is that all the writers are all more of less the same age but all from different milieu. All oppose the Nazis and Hitler and by their tales allow the reader to grasp what it must have been like to live in a society dominated by ideology, cruelty and the rule of the arbitrary.  There is also explanations of the beliefs and attitudes of the time which stand in sharp contrast if not total opposition to what we believe today. It is at times difficult to believe that the world in Europe and North America was so very different from today.

I started with the biography of our longest serving Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, 22 years in office. Based on his own diaries, which total more than 2 million pages, we have the picture of a very insecure man, who could be petty, mean and very self-centered, who never seemed to appreciate those who worked for him and did not suffer the slightest criticism real or imagined. It is well known now, but not so during his life, that he was deeply involved into the occult and spiritualism, his dead mother and his dead dog Pat 1 figure prominently into his diaries. In June 1939 King George VI and the Queen had lunch with Mackenzie King at Laurier House is home in Ottawa and then the Official Residence of our Prime Minister, he apparently gave a tour of the large house to the King and showed him where he held his séance. I can just imagine what the King must have thought.

Mackenzie King was a bigot and an anti-semite by today's standards but then many in his Cabinet and in the general population in Canada had the same attitudes, Fascism was popular to counter the Communist threat and unemployment. Mackenzie King met several times with Churchill and his daughter Mary Soames, who in her book describes him as a bit of an old Aunt. Rex as he was known to his friends really believed that he was a big player in the conferences that were held during the Second World War in Quebec City at the Chateau Frontenac. In 1938 he met with Hitler in Berlin and with Mussolini in Rome. He thought Hitler a nice chap and told him not to abandon his good work for Germany and advised him not to launch a war. Strangely enough at the end of the war when he is told that Hitler has committed suicide, Rex writes in his diary, I told him not to start a war, such a mistake.

The book of Mary Soames is about her life, that of great privilege, of her family and her father Winston and her mother Clementine. Her cousin the Duke of Marlborough and life at Chartwell or at the Admiralty or 10 Downing street. Christmas parties at Blenheim Palace and life for a young girl leading up to the war. Then she joins in the war effort and gets involved manning anti-aircraft guns in the defence of London. It is somewhat surreal to read this book, she describes how while stationed with her company, her father, the Prime Minister, would appear for an inspection tour. She would know he was coming before her Commanding Officer. She will often accompany her father and she is privy to State secrets. She meets FDR whom she likes a lot and many other important people like DeGaulle. Her memoirs are a special more personal access the world of the Churchill family, her father and mother.

She describes her fellow soldiers as nice middle-class people, good mannered. Her weekends are at parties given by friends in high society, much dancing and frivolities. The reader wonders what did her mates thought of all this, they lived in very different world. In Mary Soames world there was no great rationing, her mother always has some specialty food treat. Tragedy did strike during the war years, she writes in her diaries of the sadness and sacrifice of British people, but there is a stiff upper lip tone to it all.

Then the story of one German girl about the same age as Mary Soames and the story of another girl, a Pole living in Warsaw under difficult circumstances due to her family being Jewish.

In the book Letters from Berlin, we have the life of  Margarete Dos, born in Pomerania (Prussia) now part of Poland. Her family was well to do and her life story is told through a series of letters and recollections she gave to her daughter before she died in 2005. She grew up during the Nazi dictatorship and the family moved during that time to Berlin. Her father had in 1933 told the family that Hitler and the Nazi party would ruin Germany, that these people were no good, but Margarete being a child did not pay much attention. Her mother remarried when her father died after falling off his horse. Her step-father was an Officer in the German Navy and worked at the Navy HQ in Berlin.

Like all children she had other interests and pre-occupations centered on teenager concerns, though in September 1939 at the start of the war she becomes aware that the adults are worried and that her mother is frightened of what is coming.  Her younger brother and she will witness from their home the events of Kristallnacht in 1938 and how they as children are uncomprehending and see that the adults around them keep quiet out of fear. At the same time, she describes the life of her school friend Hilde, who is half-Jewish and who remains in Berlin with her family until the end of the war, with the help of friends and neighbours.

She has vivid recollections of being told by her mother to be afraid of the SS and the Gestapo and to avoid them at all cost. As the war progresses she is a University student in Jena and then works as a Red Cross nurse and sees friends die in the bombing of cities. She like so many Germans trapped in this turmoil wish to be rid of the Nazi and their lies but feel powerless. At the end of the war, she and her mother are deported to Siberia by the Soviets and will spend two years in a work camp. Only to return to Germany in 1947 to a new world, at this point she decides to immigrate to Sweden where she has family. This book is interesting because of he detailed eyewitness account of her life and of events, of the terrible sadness and of all the lives destroyed.

The other book is the story of a Jewish girl in Warsaw, who is protected by her parents from the harsh realities of life in Warsaw and then in the Ghetto itself during the war years. This book for me brought back memories of Warsaw, the streets mentioned in her book, I knew well. The family lived around the area where the Canadian Embassy is located. With my knowledge of Warsaw I could see her travels in the city. She also describes life in the Ghetto but appears unaware of the harshness, her parents shielding her from the daily horrors. Like all children she is aware of changes and understands that it is best not to ask questions, it might be dangerous or troubling. Her 15 journeys will take her around Warsaw during the war and the last one to London after the war. She will be hidden by Catholic Nuns and will learn a new identity as a Christian child so that she can hide from the Nazis. In a city like Warsaw which will be totally razed in the course of the war these journeys have an unbelievable quality. Courage, discretion, fortitude, faith in the future, will help her survive. Towards the end of 1943 she says in the book that she knew, she does not know how, that her parents were dead. They had stayed behind in the Ghetto unable to escape. Many friends and family members will also die, some choosing to commit suicide like her grandmother, knowing what the future will bring. She only killed herself after ensuring that her grand daughter would survive.

All these books speak of a different experience of a deeply troubled time, all are interesting for the personal details and descriptions they bring to the reader. They also show that our perception of that period is often wrong or we have jumped to conclusions with the propaganda offered by Hollywood or by people not really interested in understanding history.

 

Visit to the Synagogue of ROME

Today we went to the Portico d'Ottavia near the Tiber River and the old Roman Forum. This is where the Ghetto of Rome was from 1550 to 1870. The Jews in Rome have been here for 2200 years, they are the oldest Jewish community in Europe. Jews and Palestine are of course part of the fabric of old Rome. Palestine was a Roman Province and part of the career path of any Roman aspiring to high office. After the destruction of the Great Temple in Jerusalem by Emperor Titus in 70AD, all the treasures of the Temple including the Arch of the Covenant were brought back to Rome and put inside the Temple of Peace in the Roman Forum where they remained for centuries, they are all lost today unfortunately.

The great Synagogue was built in 1901 and is part of the project of Garibaldi to make of Rome the new capital of the unified Italian Kingdom. The ghetto was demolished and the Jews freed and made full Italian citizens. What you see today was built after 1870, a modern neighborhood with water and electricity service and clean wide streets.

The Jews in Rome have an interesting history, they operate not as a congregation but as a community as a whole, you have Sephardic and Ashkenazy,Roman and Italian traditions. This is unusual for people visiting from outside Italy, they do not always understand how you can have all this in one building. The jews in Rome follow the Orthodox rite. Rome has a population of 14,000 jews today, there were about 15,000 before 1943. Some 2000 where deported by the Nazis between September 1943 and Spring of 1944, the rest took refuge at the Vatican State and in Churches and hospitals and in the homes of fellow Italians.

The Synagogue itself has an organ which is played during services, that is unusual and the decor inside the building is Babylonian and Egyptian and has some Art Deco touches with colors of Red and Gold, Imperial colors of old Rome. That is to say if we cannot have the Temple in Jerusalem we can have this one in the Eternal City.

The ceiling is painted in blue with little gold stars and the windows are stained glass with colored flowers. It is imposing and joyous all at once.

The museum has many beautiful textiles given throughout history to the community. Many silver objects for the Torah and other religious objects for the service. They have 850 covers for the Torahs, so they can change them daily. Services are held in the morning, afternoon and evening. Visitors in our group from the USA where amazed at this wealth of religious artifacts.

Our guide works at the Synagogue and was knowledgeable and a diplomat all at once. Some of the questions puzzled him, they came from American jews who asked in the way a rich relative asks about your well being, feeling a bit sorry for you and curious about how you are getting along.

One lady wanted to know about mix marriages between jews of different rites,let's say Sephardic and Roman, our guide told her simply we do like everyone else and go to the Hilton. Same lady wanted to know if there was a Jewish hospital, Yes there is one just across the street on the Island.

Another lady wanted to know who turned on the lights inside the Synagogue for Sabbath services. Are all the lights electrified or do you use candles. Our guide just told her, we turn them on, just before the service. The lady was a bit surprised and asked if they asked a non-Jew to do this for them. Our guide said no we don't.
But you are Orthodox Jews are you not, she says. Yes we are said the guide but you can call us Orthodox Italian Style.

Our guide did explain that Judaism for a long period was transmitted by oral tradition, the Popes forbade teaching the Talmud.
It was only with the liberation of Rome by the troops of Garibaldi in 1870 that the Jews finally could once again study. This explains the special tradition of Jewish Roman heritage where the practical joins the reality of everyday life. You also will notice that in and around the old ghettos are Churches set up by the Vatican as reminders to the Jews of the errors or their ways. Inscriptions on the front of the building in Hebrew and in Latin calls to them as unbelievers to accept the teachings of Jesus and the authority of the Pope. Viewed today, this historical legacy helps you understand the politics of religion. Our guide pointed out that it was Pope Jean-Paul II who on a visit to the Synagogue, said that the Jewish Faith was the big brother to Christianity. An interesting perspective after centuries of persecution by the Popes.

We had lunch at the Taverna del Ghetto, www.latavernadelghetto.com
We have been there several times and the food is great, with many Roman Jewish Specialties. We took a walk along the Tiber to help us digest on the old Tiberina Island. The photos here are of our walk on the island, where an hospital has stood for 2000 years. In one photo you see me touching part of the marble remnants of the boat shaped hospital dedicated to the God of Medecine.