San Domenico Monastery

The parish priest of Montecreto, Father Ercole Bertolani, is remembered for his efforts to protect his parishioners from the effects for the war and for saving several Jews. In spring 1944 he concealed Jewish refugees from Sestola in the monastery, and lodged four more, natives of the former Yugoslavia, with the family which lived at Ca’ Borra. Father Bertolani not only provided the refugees with food but also obtained false identity and ration cards for them. In the meantime the situation became very dangerous, and so he entrusted the Jews from Ca’ Borra to the partisans, while he himself managed to produce counterfeit Todt documents, which transformed the Jews into workers destined for the construction sites in Tuscany; he even managed to obtain for them allowances intended for refugees in the Republic of Salò …. “after all, charity does not care about identity cards,” as he wrote in his diary.