Pancani Leonilda (Barsotti)

Pancani, Leonilda After September 8, 1943, Leonilda (Ilda) Pancani (née Barsotti), mother to three children, Sonia, 13, Franca, 9, and Alberto, 11, gave refuge for three months to a number of refugees, among them Elias Löwenwirth, in her home in Florence. Elias Löwenwirth, born in Czechoslovakia, had escaped with his wife, Lora, and six children from Saint Martin Vésubie in France to Italy. They managed to escape the German roundup in Valdieri and from their imprisonment in Borgo San Dalmazzo. He found refuge in Florence, with the aid of the Jewish-Christian aid committee, headed by Rabbi Dr. Nathan Cassuto and Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa. He was hidden at the house of Pancani, with three other Jews: Hermann Brender, Walter Silberstein and Henri Rathaus. Lea Löwenwirth, Elias’s daughter, was among the children hiding at the time in Convento delle Suore Francescane di Maria in Piazza Del Carmine, together with her mother Lora and the wives of the other men in hiding at Pancani’s apartment. According to Lea (later Reuveni), on November 26, 1943, the Germans conducted a search in the convent, where about 40 Jewish women and children had found refuge. Except for Lea and her mother, the wife of Walter Silberstein and their two daughters, Helene, four, and Susanna, 11 months old, all the others were discovered. Little Helene later died, and Mrs. Silberstein was deported with her husband on May 16, 1944. Susanna was saved by a nun and stayed at the convent all that time. On January 5, 1944, the Germans, accompanied by Italian Fascists, conducted a search of Pancani’s house, and they found the men who were hiding there. They were taken to Fossoli di Carpi and then deported to a death camp. Pancani was arrested as well, and her daughters were left alone in the apartment. When Lea came to visit her father that day, she found only the two frightened girls. Those arrested by the Germans never returned home, except for Pancani, who was released from prison two weeks later.She passed away in 1982. While Susanna Silberstein grew up with no picture of her family or any memories of them, Sonia and Franca, Pancani’s daughters, never forgot the Jewish men who stayed at their home during the war, when their own father was away. They remembered Walter Silberstein and also Lea’s father, Elias Löwenwirth, who used to sing to them in German and play with them. On February 11, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Leonilda Barsotti Pancani as Righteous Among the Nations.