According to Italian Press Agency, ANSA, that recalled a statement by the Roman Catholic order disclosed Tuesday on the website sanfrancesco.org, Franciscan monks in Assisi saved more than forty Jews during the Second World War: they managed to hide them inside the belltower of St Francis' Basilica in the Umbrian hilltown.

The fugitives were hidden in the tower in groups of four to six people with the superior of the monastery not aware of their presence, according to the article written as part of literature on the eve of the Holocaust Day of memory. Each evening when the organ was played the people in hiding were able to leave the belltower briefly without ever being spotted by the Nazis. "Like St Francis people have to make themselves instruments of peace," said Frate Enzo Fortunato, head of the press office of the monastery.

Fonte: L'italo-Americano