Angela Carlo

Angela, Carlo Prof. Carlo Angela, born in 1875, was a medical director of a private psychiatric sanatorium in San Maurizio Canavese (Turin province). He was an ardent opponent of the Fascist regime and did not hesitate to risk his life and the life of his family to save Jews. He hid the following Jews in his sanatorium: Donato Bachi, who once was the manager of the anti-Fascist newspaper Tempi Nuovi, the Fiz family, the wife and daughter of the advocate Massimo Ottolenghi, Captain Finzi, a Milanese merchant called Levi, Colonel Lattes and Renzo Segre. The latter was hidden for 20 months at the clinic, together with his wife Nella Segre (née Morelli). Renzo Segre, born in 1909, originally from Casale Monferrato, was a graduate in economics and commerce. He served as a government employee in Rome until the Racial Laws of 1938, when he lost his job and moved to Biella to work in a family business. After the German invasion of Italy in September 1943, and despite the risks, Prof. Angela was willing to offer him and his wife refuge. He did not know them before but they came to him through the recommendation of another anti-Fascist doctor, Dr. Mussone of Biella. Renzo was hospitalized as a mental patient, under the false name of Segrato, and he was treated as the rest of the patients to avoid suspicion. His wife’s stay at the clinic as an assistant was explained as a necessary step because of the grave condition of her husband. It was important to be very discreet, because the hospital staff as well as the whole neighborhood were filled with Fascists. Carlo Angela also took care of providing his wards with fake identity cards and ration tickets. He also knew how to encourage them, and lift their spirits and come up with solutions to their problems. He was assisted in his work on behalf of the Jews by his deputy Giuseppe Brun, Mother Tecla and the nurses Fiore Destefanis and Carlo and Sante Simionato. From time to time, Prof. Angela let Nella Segre use his privatestudio in Turin for clandestine meetings with relatives dispersed at various hiding places. Only after the war did he reveald to his wards that the Fascist police had found out about the Segres and their connection with him and that he had been summoned for interrogation in Turin. At the interrogation, he bravely denied that Segre was a Jew and assured his investigators that he was just one of his patients. After the war, he showed the Segres the documents relating to this interrogation. On another occasion, after the killing of a major Fascist leader by the partisans, Prof. Angela, together with a male nurse from his clinic and two civilians, was arrested. The three were executed but Carlo Angela was spared due to the intervention of another Fascist leader who had been a patient in his clinic. After the Liberation, Prof. Carlo Angela was appointed mayor of San Maurizio. He passed away in 1949. On June 3, 2000, a street was named in Prof. Carlo Angela’s honor and a plaque was placed at the entrance of the clinic located opposite the Palazzo Comunale in San Maurizio Canavese, where he had saved the persecuted Jews. Renzo Segre, depicted in his published diary, “Twenty Months” (Venti Mesi) the dedication and self-sacrifice of his rescuer during September 1943-May 1945, the period during which he was hidden. On August 29, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Carlo Angela as Righteous Among the Nations.