Roman bus tells of boy who escaped Nazis by hiding on it

An exhibit on Roman buses tells the story of a 12-year-old boy who escaped Nazi deportation 80 years ago by hiding in a tram.

Emanuele Di Porto, now 92, rode a tram for two days in Oct. 1943 to avoid deportation from Rome’s Jewish neighborhood, with sympathetic drivers feeding and taking care of him. 

The exhibit, which is on a bus, is part of the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of when German soldiers rounded up close to 1,200 individuals from the city’s small Jewish community during World War II.

On Oct. 16, 1943, Di Porto’s mother pushed him off the truck that was deporting Roman Jews to Nazi death camps in northern Europe.

He made it to a tram stop nearby, got on and told the ticket attendant about what had happened.

For two days, he slept and ate on the tram, with drivers taking turns bringing him food.

“For those two days that I was on the tram, I didn’t see anything. I was always thinking of my mother,’’ Di Porto told The Associated Press.

He never saw his mother again, but was reunited with his father, who avoided being captured because he was working in another area that morning, and his siblings after a train rider recognized him.

Residents and visitors to Italy’s capital city can take the buses — that travel along the same route that Di Porto did — which circumvent Rome’s main synagogue.

Rome’s Mayor Roberto Gualtieri said that Oct. 16 marks “one of the most tragic events of the history of this city, of the history of Italy.”

Only 16 of the Roman Jews who were deported survived the Nazi death camps.

With Post Wires