Giovanni Palatucci (May 31, 1909 – February 10, 1945) was an Italian police official who saved thousands of Jews from being deported to Nazi extermination camps.
Palatucci was born in Montella, Avellino, Italy. He graduated from the University of Turin, Faculty of Law in 1932. In 1936 he entered police service in Genoa and the following year he was assigned to Fiume.
After the promulgation of racial laws against Jews in 1938 and at the beginning of World War II in 1940, Palatucci was chief of the Foreigners' Office. Palatucci edited the necessary residence papers requested by law for the refugees. He began falsifying documents and visas. When Palatucci "officially deported" Jews, he instead arranged for them to be sent to Campania. He told them to contact his uncle, the Catholic Bishop of Campania Giuseppe Maria Palatucci, who would offer them the greatest assistance possible.[1] He managed to destroy all documented records of the some 10,000 Jewish refugees living in the town, issuing them false papers and providing them with funds.
Following the 1943 capitulation of Italy, Fiume was occupied by Nazis. Palatucci remained as head of the police administration without real powers. He continued to clandestinely help Jews and maintain contact with the Resistance, until his activities were discovered by the Gestapo. The Swiss Consul to Trieste, a close friend of his, offered him a safe pass to Switzerland, but Giovanni Palatucci sent his young Jewish fiancée instead.
Palatucci was arrested on September 13, 1944. He was condemned to death, but the sentence was later commuted to deportation to Dachau, where he died on February 10, 1945, mere weeks before the Dachau camp was liberated by the Allies on April 29, 1945. Some say that he died of malnutrition and others declared that he was shot. He was only 36 years old.[1]
He was officially honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in 1990 as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. As of March 2005, a beatification case is in progress.