Reuniting with miracle children
THEY WERE thrown together 77 years ago in Italy amid the chaos of war: a Jewish soldier and three young children that he almost shot.
Now American veteran Martin Adler, 97, and the trio he happily spared have been reunited.
The son of Hungarian immigrants, Mr Adler enlisted in the US Army aged 20. By the time he reached the village of Monterenzio, near Bologna in Northern Italy, in October 1944, Adler had been fighting for seven months and been awarded a Bronze Star Medal.
Adler and a fellow soldier entered a cottage and found a large basket. Hearing muffled noises, they pointed their machine guns and were about to fire when a woman threw herself in front of them, screaming that there were children inside.
The lid came off and out came Bruno, Giuliana and Mafalda Naldi, aged from three to six. Adler took out his camera and asked the woman, their mother, to take a photograph.
Last year, with his daughter Rachelle’s help, he searched for the children through Facebook. It turned out all three are alive, and a virtual reunion took place in December.
Last week, after travel restrictions eased, Mr
Adler flew to Bologna and was physically reunited with the trio, who now have six children, eight grandchildren and two greatgrandchildren.
Mr Adler said:
“The mother was a real hero.” Giuliana, 80, remembered the two soldiers seeing children emerge from the basket.
“They were laughing,” she said. “They were happy he didn’t shoot.”
In the army, Mr Adler kept a Star of David necklace, but in his boots, not around his neck, for fear of capture. After Rome’s liberation, he visited the city’s Great Synagogue and at last felt free to put the Star of David on and pray, writing to his mother he had felt “swell”.
But in the ghetto’s empty streets he saw the fate of Rome’s Jews. Finding a mezuzah on a door, he knocked repeatedly until a voice said: “They’ve all been taken.”
After the war, he worked in social services. The sketches from his visit will be sold in aid of Italian charities. Italian author Matteo Incerti Incerti has written a book about Adler’s story, I Bambini del Soldato Martin (Soldier Martin’s Children), part of the profits from which will also go to charity.