Guiseppe “Pino” Lella was born in Milan 1926, growing up during the rise of Nazi Germany. During the bombing of his home town, he left to stay in a Catholic school for boys called. "Casa Alpina" with his father and brother in the Alps. When he found out that Nazis have been brutally killing Jews he became part of an operation that smuggled Jews out of Italy through the Alps. At 17, his anti-fascist opinion was well established, while his parents wanted him to work for the Nazis in order to escape conscription in Forced Labor. Since he hated the Nazis, he took a non-combative role to minimize how much he helped their war effort. In 1943, he began his two year war experience at the age of 17, as the personal driver for General Hans Leyers, Hitler's Right Hand Man in Italy.
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Photo of Guiseppe "Pino" Lella, taken from his papers.
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According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(3rd edition, Houghton Mifflin Co, 1992), the term unsung is defined as "Not honored or praised; uncelebrated". By this definition, an Unsung Hero is a person who commits heroic acts(could just be one, or maybe many heroic acts) but receives little to no acknowledgement for what they did, whether that is because of one circumstance or more. Born in 1926, Guiseppe "Pino" Lella had smuggled Jews out of Italy through the Swiss Alps, and then spied for the Allies from 1943 to 1945, and lived to tell the tale. He turned 92 by the time that his story was finally told to others on a relatively large scale in the novel Beneath a Scarlet Sky. After the war, he moved to America to make sure that his story was told, but had given up until he was contacted by Mark Sullivan, the soon-to-be author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky. |
"Beneath a Scarlet Sky" is a book about our unsung hero, written by Mark Sullivan. Mark was apparently at "Rock Bottom" before he was working on this book, as his previous works have not done much for him. As he was at his wit's end, he decided to tag along with his wife to a party she was invited to. At that party, he heard a story about a boy from Milan who saved Jews by guiding them through the Swiss alps to safety. He decided to get more information on this person, venturing all the way to Italy to interview Lella himself. While writing the book, he found assistance in the form Pino's son, Micheal Lella. |
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