International honour for Holocaust hero who sheltered 800 Shoah survivors in Italian Alps

A young Jewish carpenter who served in the British army has been posthumously honoured with a Medal of Valor at Simon Wiesenthal Centre’s Annual Tribute dinner in the US.

Moshe Ze’iri had emigrated to Palestine from Galicia, Poland and lived on agricultural kibbutz, Kvutzat Schiller.

A Jewish member of a British Army unit, Eretz Israel, stationed in northern Italy,  he rescued hundreds of young Jewish Holocaust survivors following the country’s liberation.

Between 1945 and 1948, he transformed the “Sciesopoli” orphanage in the mountainous village of Selvino into a warm home for young refugees aged between 4 and 17 years old.

The compound, half an hour from Bergamo, had housed the children of officers under Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. It was appropriated and adapted by Ze’iri, himself a lifelong Zionist.

From across Europe, the children had been hidden, lived in forests, monasteries and survived concentration camps.

Nearly 80 years later, grandchildren Yoav Amitai, Ilana Sarner and Ben Sarner travelled to Los Angeles on behalf of the wider family for a commemoration attended by Steven Spielberg.

Addressing the audience, Ben Sarner said the award recognised his grandfather’s “truly inspirational work when, in the three years following the end of World War II, he started an orphanage in a town called Selvino, Italy. Here he rescued, rehabilitated, and restored humanity to over 800 children, orphans who had seen their families decimated during the atrocities of the Holocaust, and somehow managed to survive.”

Whilst the grandchildren were in the US, Ze’iri’s daughter Nitza Sarner travelled to Selvino, Italy.

She was there, along with 60 guests for the the 75th anniversary of the closing of the orphanage. The event was organised by the Selvino Children’s Association and Sarner was one of the 5 adults in attendance who was originally at the compound as a child; she lived there with her parents between 1946 and 1948.

Transformed into a kibbutz-style refuge, Selvino became a hub for Jewish learning and engagement for the young survivors, preparing them for their eventual move to Israel. Ze’iri gave all the children Hebrew names, they learned the language and observed Shabbat and festivals.

Nitza Sarner was almost five years old when she and her mother travelled from their kibbutz home where her parents had married in 1938, to Italy to join him.

Speaking to Jewish News from her home in St. John’s Wood, the dining room is filled with photo albums. Emotionally recalling her time in Italy as a young child and the friendships cemented there that exist decades later, she proudly presents some of her fathers letters, commenting on his “tiny  handwriting”.

“He just wanted to save the children, and he did that,” she says.

Moshe Ze’iri died in 1987.

Miriam Bisk, chairperson of the Children of Selvino, is now championing efforts to preserve the orphanage building, which, together with all the land around it, is for sale.

In a message to Nitza Sarner seen by Jewish News, she writes:

“We fear that it will be sold to people who will have no interest in preserving the place, and/or in having an activity in it to preserve the legacy of this exciting human enterprise. An initiative is now being organized to save the building, and ensure that at least part of it be used as a museum that will present the story of the Selvino children, and as an international educational center for the values ​​of solidarity and tolerance.”

The surviving original children of Selvino, together with their descendants, are now dedicated to preserving the life and legacy of both Ze’iri and the building that gave them hope after horror.

To learn more about the life and legacy of Moshe Ze’iri, click here.

To read a new English translation on the life of Moshe Ze’iri by Sergio Luzzato, click here.