Elisabetta imagined her family story joining so many others, layering atop one another over time, a palimpsest of stories encompassing the world entire, a veritable history of humankind told by one generation to the next, building upon each other.
And all of them everlasting, with love.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I have wanted to write this novel ever since my days as an English major at the University of Pennsylvania, where I took a year-long seminar taught by the late Philip Roth. The first semester of the seminar was titled “The Literature of the Holocaust,” and Mr. Roth introduced us to the books of Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish chemist who was deported to Auschwitz but survived and wrote the seminal memoir If This Is a Man, published in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz. The subject haunted me for decades, and I knew I would return to it someday. Finally, after writing thirty-odd novels exploring themes of family, love, and justice, I decided to try. That effort is Eternal.
I have always loved reading historical fiction, and one of the questions I always have when I finish reading historical fiction is, how much of this novel is true? So allow me to differentiate the fiction of Eternal from historical fact.
First, the D’Orfeo, Simone, and Terrizzi families are products of my imagination, as are Elisabetta, Marco, and Sandro. Most of the novel’s minor characters are also imagined, except as described below. However, I did the research to make their speech, dress, and other attributes consistent with their times.
But much of what transpires in these pages is true to the past.
Most importantly, the horrific rastrellamento of the Ghetto and other neighborhoods of Rome did actually happen on October 16, 1943, as described in the novel. Jewish men, women, and children were forced from their homes at gunpoint, then sent to the Collegio Militare and ultimately to Auschwitz. In fact, the families whom Sandro sees when he is taken away are the names of actual Jewish families who ended up on the Nazi transport from Rome to Auschwitz. Only sixteen people survived.
The events preceding the rastrellamento really did happen, as described in the novel. The Nazis did extort gold from the Jewish Community, and the Community met its demand despite impossible odds. President Ugo Foà and President Dante Almansi were real people, and their heroic efforts to save the Community and its priceless patrimony are shown herein. Chief Rabbi Zolli was a real person, as were goldsmith Angelo Anticoli, accountant Renzo Levi, and secretary Rosina Sorani.
Tullio Levi-Civita was a real mathematician, known as the “Einstein of Italy,” and what happened to him as a result of the Race Laws, as well to many other brilliant Jewish professors, is described in the novel.
Dr. Giovanni Borromeo, the administrator of the Ospedale Fatebenefratelli, was a real physician and professor of medicine. Amazingly, he truly did devise the incredible ruse to fool the Nazis, fabricating the Syndrome K virus to save the hospital’s Jewish patients.
Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler was a real person who was the highest ranking officer of the Schutzstaffel, or the SS, in Rome. His words in his conversation with Massimo and Presidents Foà and Almansi at Villa Wolkonsky are taken from my historical research, notably from Robert Katz’s nonfiction books. Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty was a real monsignor at the Vatican during the relevant time period, and he was called the “Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican” because he donned disguises to evade the Nazis as he protected Italian Jews. It is also true that Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty visited Kappler in prison, and that eventually Kappler converted to Roman Catholicism.
Baron Ernst von Weizs?cker was also a real person, an Italophile and the German Ambassador to the Holy See during the relevant time period. His conversations with Elisabetta are fictional, of course, but my research about him shows them to be consistent with his personality.
The transit camp at Fossoli existed, as did other transit and concentration camps in Italy. The Fossoli camp is outside the town of Carpi, near the city of Modena, as described herein. When I visited Italy to research this novel, I explored Carpi and what remains of the transit camp, and it was a deeply sobering experience. There is a memorial museum about the transit camp in Carpi, the Museo al Deportato, which contains exhibits that informed my research, as well as a memorial to those lost. I filmed videos of the camp and the museum, which can be seen on my website.
Most of the other locations in the novel are real places in Rome, with the exception of the exact location of Elisabetta’s childhood home and Nonna’s house in Trastevere. I fictionalized those streets, though Trastevere is a remarkably charming neighborhood in Rome and everything I described about it herein is true. Casa Servano is fictional, although anybody who visits Rome can tell you that the pasta is incredible, and carbohydrates are among the three billion reasons to go.