On 15 April 2015, a Day of Remembrance was held at Villa Mondragone, Rome, today the Congress Center for Tor Vergata Medical University. During the festivities, a plaque was unveiled certifying the Villa as a “House of Life”–a title awarded by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation as a tribute to those who sheltered Jews and other persecuted people during the Nazi Holocaust.
The Day of Remembrance focused in particular on Fr. Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe, who during the war was dean of the Noble College of Mondragone and also vice president of the Society for Assistance (POA) appointed by Pope Pius XII. After 16 October 1943, when the Nazis broke into the Jewish quarter of Rome to deport all its inhabitants, Fr. Cubbe risked his own safety to hide several Jewish children at the boarding school, an action that earned him the honorary title of “Righteous among the Nations.”
The purpose of the Houses of Life Project is to identify and mark physical sites across Europe (churches, monasteries, convents, schools or family residences) in which innocent victims of the Holocaust found refuge. These places are honored with a plaque recounting their stories so that passers-by will question themselves and…not forget.