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The converts' persistence was rewarded in the fall of 1943, when the town was liberated by Palestinian units of the Eighth Army. The "Manduzians" received them with wild enthusiasm. Manduzio wrote in a letter: "Allied troops have arrived at San Nicandro. . . . When we noticed that vehicles had Hebrew signs we said to ourselves: these people are Jews, and we hoisted a flag with the same sign in front of my door. A truck stopped in front of my house and so did a whole convoy. They entered our home saluting with 'shalom.'"
A Wife for Nazaro. Now the Jews of San Nicandro are anxious to go to Palestine. Isolated as they are, they are threatened with extinction. There have been no conversions for several years, and Donato Manduzio is a greyheaded man. Marriage presents an almost insurmountable difficulty for them. Last year one of the group's elders wrote to the president of a Jewish refugee organization: "A young man, Nazaro di Salva, born in 1925, wants to take a wife, but in our community there is none. I therefore apply to you as president of orphans and refugees, that you might find among them a girl willing to marry him and come to San Nicandro. If you think it possible . . . write . . . making an appointment for making the girl's acquaintance so that our young man does not take a wife among other nations. ... If you don't wish to look after this matter our young man will take a gentile wife which thing won't please the Eternal. It won't be our fault since we know no refugee girls."
This knotty problem still remains unsolved, but life for San Nicandro's Jews is not without its consolations. They had their great day a year ago when they were officially received into the Jewish community. Wrote Manduzio to the Union of Jewish Communities in Rome: "We have completed our arduous undertaking as far as circumcision is concerned. We hope that after what has happened you will pay us a visit. , . ."
*For four of them (1941-45), the Chief Rabbi in Rome was Rabbi Israele Zolli, who shocked Manduzio and world Jewry in 1945 by joining the Roman Catholic Church (TIME, Feb. 26, 1945)-