Perlasca's story was previously covered by The ANNOTICO Reports more than 
a year ago and is archived by "Sicilian Culture" at  
http://www.sicilianculture.com/news/unlikelyhero.htm"
The News & Views: Most Unlikely Hero: A Fascist who Saved Jews (Georgio 
Prelasca) http://www.sicilianculture.com/news/unlikelyhero.htm

It is also archived at "Italy at St Louis" http://www.italystl.com/ See ANNOTICO 
Report.
=======================================================
>From Dominic Tassone: 
TV DRAMA HONORS ITALIAN FASCIST WHO SAVED JEWS
By Raffaella Malaguti

ROME (Reuters) - The story of an Italian Fascist who saved over 5,000 Jews
from the Holocaust might sound like a far-fetched Hollywood plot, but it
really happened and Italy is about to celebrate it in a two-episode
television series.

Forgotten for four decades at home and abroad, the strange story of Giorgio
Perlasca emerged only in 1987 thanks to the Hungarian Jews he saved from
deportation disguised as a consul.

Perlasca died at 82 in 1992, just in time to receive long-overdue honors
from Hungary and Israel. Ironically, Italy was the last country to honor
him.

But now the televised version of Perlasca's dangerous months concealed as a
Spanish diplomat in Budapest will be part of events to mark this year's
Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.

The drama was screened in parliament earlier this week and watched by
members of Italy's center-right government including post-Fascist deputy
prime minister Gianfranco Fini and Lower House speaker Pierferdinando
Casini.

It provided food for thought in Italy, where the Fascist regime of Benito
Mussolini deported thousands of Jews.

``This film...re-unites us...with the Jewish population which was badly hit
in World War Two and also unites us Italians, divided during Fascism and now
united again in the memory of those moments,'' Casini said.

Perlasca never found anything odd in the fact that he -- an early supporter
of Fascism who fought with nationalist troops in the Spanish civil war --
risked his life to save Jews.

``I could not bear the sight of people being branded like animals. I could
not bear seeing children being killed,'' Perlasca told the Italian
journalist who first told his story a decade ago in a book called ``The
Banality of Goodness.''

``That's all there was to it. I don't think I was a hero. At the end of the
day, I had an opportunity and I seized it. We have a saying here:
'opportunities make a man a thief', well, they made something else out of
me,'' he said.

``JORGE'' THE DIPLOMAT

In 1944 Budapest, no one who met the Spanish consul ``Jorge'' Perlasca had
realized he was neither Spanish nor a diplomat and in reality bore the
all-Italian name of Giorgio.

In fact he was a meat trader who was under the protection of the Spanish
embassy when the real ambassador left the country.

Seeing his chance to help, he appointed himself consul and with the aid of
embassy staff ran a protection program for Jews, organizing safe houses on
territory protected by the Spanish embassy and providing food and false
documents.

Described as an elegant man with perfect command of Spanish, Perlasca fooled
everyone, even the Hungarian foreign minister.

When the author, Enrico Deaglio, ``discovered'' him, Perlasca did not have a
phone and led a modest life in northern Italy.

Perlasca said in those days he often met famous Swedish diplomat Raoul
Wallenberg, who helped tens of thousands of Jews escape Nazi death camps by
giving them Swedish passports.

But while Wallenberg's story was internationally renowned, when Perlasca
returned to Italy, no one, not even his wife believed him. So he simply put
his story to rest.

Some, including Deaglio, say Perlasca's tale was ignored because in a
postwar Italy trying to deal with its Fascist past, forgetting was easier
than remembering.

``There was a great desire to forget and not much desire to draw
comparisons. If a modest man -- alone and without a solid political
representation -- had managed to carry out those deeds, why then hadn't
others done the same ?'' Deaglio wrote.

The television drama, called ``Perlasca,'' will be aired by state-owned
network RAI on January 28 and 29.