Arie Reich – a Professor from Bar Ilan University in Israel who is an expert in international trade law and European Union law – is the son of Yoel (Julek) Reich, a “Child of Selvino”.
On 7 June 2017 he visited Selvino and the former alpine colony of Sciesopoli together with his wife, Atara.
There was a lot of emotion involved for him to view the building where his father experienced the rebirth of his life in 1945 after surviving the Nazi extermination camps, including Auschwitz and Birkenau., He was surprised by the uphill road to Selvino, made of numerous bends and run by so many cyclists and the colored letter “Welcome” just before Selvino.
In Selvino, he was received by Vice Mayor of Selvino, Virginia Magoni, and film director Enrico Grisanti, who shot an interview with him. Arie also met some friends from the “Children of Selvino” Amuta who have been working for years to save the Memory of the Children’s Home of Selvino, the 800 Jewish orphans who survived the Shoah.
Arie in Israel is part of a group of cyclists who organize mountain bike excursions each week.
He enjoyed the story of Giovanni Bloisi’s tour cycle from Italy to Israel.
Arie’s father, Yoel Reich, was born in Lodz in 1929 and lived the Shoah through personal and collective tragedy in various extermination camps, including Auschwitz and Birkenau. He was one of the few who survived the terrible “March of Death” on the ice fields of Poland and the snowy mountains of Austria, when the Nazis were trying to move their prisoners, and the evidence of their crimes, away from the Allied forces.
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Yoel Reich managed to arrive in Italy at the end of the conflict and was in Magenta in Villa Fagiana and then a guest of the Selvino colony in Sciesopoli.
From Selvino to the ship Enzo Sereni, “La Rondine”, he went to Israel as part of the “illegal” immigration. The ship was captured by the British and Yoel was confined to the British prison camp in Atlit, Israel, for a few months.
When he was released, he first settled in the kibbutz Hanita, then went to the agricultural school Mikveh Israel, and in 1948 fought in the War of Independence as a soldier in the newly established Israeli army.
He lived many years in Sweden, where he established a successful chain of fashion shops and came back to Israel with his whole family in 1973. He passed away in 2005.
Shortly after the war, he wrote his memoirs in Hebrew, which was later published by his children under the name “Thou Broughtest My Soul from the Nether-world” in which chapters 18-19 are dedicated to Selvino and his journey to Palestine: http://www.yoelreich.net/
He left a special testimony as a refugee embarked on the ship Enzo Sereni.
In his autobiography, he recalls the proud behavior of the ship’s commander, Captain Mezzano, a 60-year-old Italian, who proclaimed publicly at the time of British intervention, near the Palestinian coast, in French to be understood by all from the passengers because his words were translated into their own language:
“While we are captured by British armed troops, I declare that I am not afraid of punishment, even afterwards, I will continue to bring the Jews to Israel, their home, this is not the first time that Jews are transported to Israel, I am proud of the opportunity to bring the Jews back to their homeland. No law and no threat of punishment will prevent me from performing this historic role.“
