Rome buses recount story of a Jewish boy who avoided Nazi deportation by riding tram. He’s now 92

By FRANCES D’EMILIO
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — Residents and visitors in Italy’s capital can ride a city bus this month that recounts how a 12-year-old boy escaped Nazi deportation from Rome’s Jewish neighborhood 80 years ago thanks to sympathetic tram drivers. German soldiers rounded up about 1,200 members of the city’s tiny Jewish community on Oct. 16, 1943. Emanuele Di Porto, now 92, was one them, but his mother pushed him off a truck that was deporting Jews to Nazi death camps in northern Europe. Di Porto hopped aboard a tram and rode for two days as drivers took turns bringing him food. A traveling exhibit that Di Porto was inaugurating on Tuesday follows the same route the tram took.