One of the world's largest bike races is coming to Israel.
(uplifting music)
I'm super excited,
because this race is honoring one of my sports idols,
who is also one of the secret heroes of the holocaust.
An Italian named Gino Bartali.
During World War Two, Gino Bartali risked his life,
helping to save hundreds of Jews from the Nazis.
He did this by smuggling fake documents inside his bike.
He rode thousands of kilometers
just under the nose of the Nazis, who were everywhere.
Giro d'Italia is known as the world's
second most important bike race,
raced over 3,000 kilometers, 21 stages,
there are over 1 billion people
watching the Giro every year.
Bartali won the Giro d'Italia three times,
the Tour de France twice,
and he set records that have never been beaten.
Bartali is more than a cyclist,
he is a national hero in Italy.
The fact that Giro d'Italia organizers
agreed to bring the race to Israel
was mainly thanks to his story and what he symbolizes
for Israel and for Italy.
- [Narrator] This story begins on the eve of World War Two.
July 1938, Italy is a police state,
ruled by a fascist totalitarian government
led by a dictator, Benito Mussolini.
There is no free speech,
government opponents are silenced or killed.
Gino Bartali, a devout and feisty Italian cycling champion,
represents his country at the Tour de France.
The Italians, who had embraced Nazi ideology,
see this as a chance to prove
they are part of the master race.
Bartali wins and is expected to dedicate his win
to Mussolini and the fascists.
But instead, he makes a defiant choice.
He insults Mussolini by ignoring him in his victory speech.
The dictator is angry and disgusted
and refuses to honor Bartali when he returns home.
This will not be the last time Bartali stands up
against a racist regime to do what he believes is right.
September 1938. The fascists pass laws
restricting Jews in almost every way.
They strip foreign born Jews of their Italian citizenship
and herd them into internment camps.
They confiscate the property of native born Italian Jews,
expel them from their jobs,
bar them from schools and colleges,
and require them to register for a special Jewish census
that constantly informs the fascists where they are.
The next year, Italy and Germany make a pact of steel
and agree to become allies, should war break out.
In September, the Nazis invade Poland
and World War Two begins.
1939 to 1942. Life is hard for Italian Jews but,
for the moment the only yellow stars
are the ones in the sky.
They can move freely around the cities and villages
and there are no cattle cars
to Auschwitz and the crematoria.
And because of this, Jews flee from all over Europe
to Italian occupied territory trying to escape the Nazis.
For the winter and spring of 1943,
Italian forces suffer defeats in North Africa
and the Eastern Front.
Meanwhile, Allied forces invade Sicily
and bomb major cities.
Italy is on the verge of defeat
yet Mussolini refuses to surrender.
July 25th, 1943. Faced with popular unrest,
Mussolini is deposed and arrested.
Italians celebrate the end of the fascist police state.
September 1943. The new government signs an armistice
with the Allies, but the war is far from over,
because the next day the Nazis respond by invading
and occupying Northern Italy.
The Jews there are trapped, there is nowhere to flee
and almost every Jew immediately tries to hide.
The Nazis begin hunting them.
As in every country they conquer,
most of the captured are herded onto trains
bound for Auschwitz.
Others are murdered on the spot.
Bartali, a devout Catholic,
is summoned to a secret meeting
with the Archbishop of Florence, Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa.
The Jews hiding in Florence and the surrounding countryside
require food shelter and, most importantly,
false documents hiding their Jewish identity.
An underground network devoted to saving them
has arranged for counterfeit papers to be printed in Assisi
over a hundred miles away.
Photographs must be brought there
and the finished papers returned to Florence.
Bartali is asked to be the courier.
If he is caught, he risks being killed.
But Bartali has been keeping another secret,
for several months he has been hiding Jewish refugees,
Giacomo Goldenberg and his family, in his apartment.
He agrees to help.
November 1943. Dawn. Bartali begins his first mission to Assisi.
with photographs and documents
hidden in the frame of his bicycle.
He shows his papers to the Nazi soldiers
guarding the entrance to Florence and leaves the city.
They assume he is simply training.
Several hours later, he makes the steep ascent
to the San Damiano monastery in Assisi.
Safely inside the compound,
he removes the fugitive photos form his bicycle
and gives them to Father Rufino Niccacci.
The photos are used in false papers
printed at the nearby press of Luigi and Trento Brizi.
Nuns at the adjacent convent open the window
and loudly sing Vespers to drone out
the sound of the press from the Nazis and fascists.
That afternoon, Bartali receives counterfeit documents
and heads back to Florence.
Half way home,
Bartali approaches the Terontola train station,
the main transfer point on the North/South train line.
The station is crawling with Nazi and Fascist guards
hunting for dissidents and Jewish fugitives
trying to switch trains.
Bartali waits to enter until the moment the trains approach.
He heads to the canteen for a cappuccino.
Large crowds surround one of Italy's biggest celebrities,
looking for a hug or an autograph.
While the guards are distracted by the commotion,
refugees and dissidents transfer trains.
At night, he arrives back in Florence,
and delivers the papers that will save peoples' lives.
Over the following months,
Bartali will repeat trips like this dozens of times.
- Bartali was a sincere person, he used to say,
"Il bene si fa, ma non si dice."
That's Italian for, "Good is something you do,
"not something you talk about."
He never actually talked about his heroic deeds
for the Jewish people and how he risked his life
during World War Two.
It wasn't until decades later,
only when other members of the Assisi underground
started talking about it, the story was exposed.
The Jews he helped save never actually saw him.
Bartali was a delivery man,
he never actually met those people.
Only in 2010, ten years after Bartali passed away,
Giorgio Goldenberg, who was a child during the holocaust,
gave evidence of how Bartali helped save his family
in his own cellar.
Thanks to Giorgo Goldenberg's evidence,
in 2013 Gino Bartali was recognized as
Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem,
the world's holocaust memorial center.
Righteous Among the Nations is an award for non-Jews
who selflessly risked their lives
and the lives of their families
to save Jews during the holocaust.
It's estimated that around 800 Jews
were saved thanks to the work of Gino Bartali
and the Assisi underground.
What attracts me to Bartali's story
is that, just like me, he loves cycling,
but unlike me, when I was a pro,
he didn't let cycling be the only thing for him,
he used it to achieve way greater things.
He risked his life to save
the lives of people he never met,
he had every possible reason not to do so
and yet still decided to do it.
For me he is an inspiration.
I believe greatness is not about winning,
it's not about what people say about you,
but it's about doing the right thing
at the right time and place
when sometimes someone else just don't.
Gino Bartali's story is an integral part
of the Jewish and Israel story, we owe him a lot.
The Giro arrival here is a celebration of sport,
but it is also a celebration of life
and is an important opportunity for us to thank him
and people like him who helped to save so many.
To share Bartali's story with the rest of the world
was doing what's right, and that's Bartali's legacy.
(uplifting music)