For Italian expatriates Lotte Katz Singer of Beverly Hills and Ann Signett of the San Fernando Valley, life is surprising as well as beautiful. The two were recently reunited 50 years after sharing a residence during the German occupation of Rome.
As part of its “The People and Nation of Italy” Yom HaShoah commemoration, on Friday, April 16, Valley Beth Shalom will honor and bring together Signett and Singer, as well as Maria Julianelli, who assisted many Jewish refugees during the war.
“Someone was protecting me,” Singer recently said of her experiences as a child growing up in Italy during World War II. “I never thought of myself as anything. It wasn’t until I couldn’t go to school anymore that I became conscious of being a Jew. It was the Germans who made me Jewish.”
