After 76 years, Israeli discovers fate of father killed by Nazis in Rome

David Reicher was only three months old when his father disappeared forever at the beginning of 1944.

JULY 8, 2020 20:11

Italy's President Mattarella visits the Fosse Ardeatine, National Monument and Memorial Cemetery of victims of German occupation, in Rome, in Rome January 31, 2015. (photo credit: REUTERS) — Italy's President Mattarella visits the Fosse Ardeatine, National Monument and Memorial Cemetery of victims of German occupation, in Rome, in Rome January 31, 2015.

(photo credit: REUTERS)

Seventy-six years after his father perished in the Holocaust, an Israeli man, with the help of Yad Vashem and Italian authorities, has discovered his father’s fate and where his remains are located.

David Reicher was only three months old when his father disappeared forever at the beginning of 1944. Less than two years before, David’s parents, Ethel and Moshe, had fled Poland and found shelter in Italy. But the Nazis soon occupied the country, ramping up the persecution of Jews from discrimination to deportation and extermination.

“I did not know anything about what happened to my father, except that he was killed in Rome,” Reicher told The Jerusalem Post. “Our mother never spoke about what happened.”

The Reichers immigrated to Israel right after the war ended in 1945. For the rest of her life, David Reicher’s mother remained very reluctant to open up about that period. Years and decades passed without any development.

“Recently a cousin of my wife, Shoshana Yosef, enrolled in a program at Yad Vashem and started doing some research about my family,” Reicher said.

During the program, called “From Roots to Trees,” a course focused on exploring family history through archival research, Yosef began to find information about Moshe Reicher, discovering, among other things, that he also was known by another name, Marian.

Further research uncovered that the name Marian Reicher appeared among the victims of an infamous Nazi mass massacre carried out in the Ardeatine Caves near Rome on March 23, 1944.

After 33 Nazi soldiers were killed by Italian partisans, the Germans decided to execute 335 men, including 76 Jews who were imprisoned in Rome’s jail to be sent to death camps.

After the war, most of the remains were identified, but for nine of them this was not possible. The massacre is remembered every year in Italy, and Italian authorities regularly visit the site to honor the victims.

“After we contacted the organization that runs the memorial site, they asked me to send my DNA for a comparison,” Reicher said. “On April 17, I received an email from the organization saying that a general of the Italian Army wanted to speak to me. Two days later we talked, and he told me that they had identified my father’s remains. It was incredibly moving.”

As soon as the coronavirus crisis permits, a proper ceremony to honor his father will be organized with the cooperation of Rome’s Jewish community, from which most of the Jewish victims came, the Italian authorities told Reicher.

More documents about the Reicher family were also uncovered in Italy, for example, reporting the exact places where Reicher and his sister, a year and a half older than him, were born in two small towns in the northeast of the country.

Reicher, 76, told the Post he had traveled to Italy and Rome in the past but did not feel a particular connection. But he intends to visit all the locations that he discovered have been part of his family’s history, first and foremost his father’s tomb.

“I’m just waiting for the coronavirus emergency to be over to be able to travel,” he said. “Every year I used to light a candle to commemorate my father on Holocaust Remembrance Day because I did not know the exact date when he died. Now I do.

“Moreover, this year Holocaust Remembrance Day fell on April 20, right when I found out that they had identified his remains. This coincidence was also very meaningful.”

In the meantime, Reicher has told the story to his children and grandchildren.

“They are all very excited,” he said. “Everyone wants to come to Rome with me.”