Eugenio Zolli
Eugenio Zolli · Historical & Religious Figures
Born Israel Zoller — scholar of Judaism, chief rabbi of Trieste and then of Rome under the German occupation, who converted to Catholicism in 1945
27 septembre 1881, Brody, Galicie, Autriche-Hongrie (Ukraine) — 2 mars 1956, Rome, Italie
Brody, Trieste, Rome
Eugenio Zolli is recognized among Israeli contributors to Historical & Religious Figures — Born Israel Zoller — scholar of Judaism, chief rabbi of Trieste and then of Rome under the German occupation, who converted to Catholicism in 1945
Origins and early life
Eugenio Zolli was born Israel Anton Zoller in Brody, in Austrian Galicia, on 27 September 1881, the son of a Jewish family of textile manufacturers, and was trained as a rabbi at the Italian Rabbinical College in Florence and as a philosopher at the university there.
Work and career
He served the Jewish community of Trieste from 1911, as its chief rabbi from 1920, and taught Hebrew and Semitic languages at the University of Padua, publishing scholarly studies of the Bible, the Talmud and Christian origins, among them Il Nazareno in 1938; the fascist laws of that year made him Italianize his name to Zolli. In 1940 he became chief rabbi of Rome, and in September 1943, when the Germans occupied the city and demanded fifty kilograms of gold from the Jews of Rome, he went into hiding, first in the Vatican and then with a Catholic family, while more than a thousand Roman Jews were seized on 16 October and sent to Auschwitz.
On 13 February 1945 he was baptized a Catholic, taking the name Eugenio in homage to Pope Pius XII, with the future Cardinal Augustin Bea as his sponsor — and this fiche says the rest as plainly: his former community judged that he had abandoned it in its worst hour and then abandoned its faith, and refused him at his return in 1944; he maintained, in his memoir Before the Dawn, that he had been converted by a vision and that the Pope had saved Rome's Jews.
Later years
Historians still argue over both his conduct in 1943 and his motives in 1945, and this fiche takes no side; he taught at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and died in Rome on 2 March 1956.
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Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/zolli-eugenio
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Born Israel Zoller — scholar of Judaism, chief rabbi of Trieste and then of Rome under the German occupation, who converted to Catholicism in 1945
Source: https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/zolli-eugenio
