Giro D’Italia Brings Hebrew U Professor Full Circle

Jerusalem, 1 May, 2018 (TPS) -- For Sergio Della Pergola, an Italian-born Hebrew University expert in Jewish demography who has served as an advisor to Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, the 101st edition of the Giro d’Italia cycle race, which kicks off May 4th from Jerusalem, Della Pergola’s home since 1966, has a very particular and intense meaning.

Della Pergola was one of the members of the committee of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center which recognized Gino Bartali, one of Italy’s greatest cyclists, as as Righteous Gentile for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust.

This year the Giro d’Italia, which is starting for the first time outside of Europe, will honor Bartali’s memory and he will be posthumously be awarded Israeli citizenship on May 2.

Della Pergola also has another personal and historic connection to the race. His father, Massimo Della Pergola, was editor-in-chief of the Milanese sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport, which founded the Giro race in 1909. The winner of each stage of the race gets the pink jersey – a color picked to match the colors of the Gazzetta.

Massimo Della Pergola, who died in 2006, was also well known in Italy for   founding Totocalcio – the soccer pools system – to finance the sport.

“The decision to start the Giro d’Italia in Israel is very symbolic, and a historic fact. It is a great occasion to celebrate the 70th independence day of Israel and is a mark of great friendship for Israel,” Della Pergola  told Tazpit Press Service (TPS).

Della Pergola’s story has been intertwined with that of the Giro d’Italia since 1950 when, at the age of 8, already a passionate cycling fan, he remembers getting Gino Bartali’s autograph in Milan.

“ I always liked cycling and followed the Giro d’Italia. When I was a student, I cycled every day from Milan to Pavia (about 50 km), where my university was,”  Della Pergola recalls.

Della Pergola decided to move to Israel in 1966, after twice taking part in the Maccabiah Games, the “Jewish Olympics,”  in 1961 and 1965, where he was a member of the Italian cycling team. “We won a silver medal and a bronze” he said.

During the war his family was saved by Italians. Like many Italian Jews, they managed to flee to Switzerland.

“It was during our stay in the refugee camp in Switzerland that my father thought about the soccer pool system,” says Della Pergola.

In 2010, Yad Vashem asked Della Pergola to take part in the commission that would eventually award Gino Bartali recognition as a  Righteous Gentile.

“Everyone knew what Bartali had done during the Nazi occupation, the fake documents stuck in the frame of his bicycle, the Jewish families hidden in his apartment in Florence, but there was no evidence. Bartali was a very reserved man: No one had ever succeeded in making him talk about what he had done at the time of the Nazi occupation. Only one researcher (Sara Corcos) from the the Jewish Contemporary Documentation Center of Milan, succeeded. She was the sister-in-law of Nathan Cassuto, a Florentine Jew who was murdered in Auschwitz concentration camp.

“Bartali had delivered many false documents to Cassuto and because of the special relationship he had with him, he revealed the details of his story to the researcher,” Della Pergola said.

On Friday Della Pergola will watch the Giro along with a television audience of 1 billion people around the world, an event that will be the highlight of his decades long passion for the sport.   

“I fell in love with Israel while cycling at the Maccabiah Games, I’m sure the cyclists of the Giro will feel the same,” Della Pergola said.