4pQonT

246 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
Italy. He made one last effort to persuade the Cisalpine Republic to
issue Gesellite script, but he was ignored.
The Chief of the Fascist Ministry for Popular Culture, who
was in charge of Pound's broadcast efforts, was also an American
expatriate, George Nelson Page. He was the son of Thomas
Nelson Page, former U.S. Ambassador to Italy. Born in France,
young Page became a great admirer of Mussolini, took out Italian
citizenship in 1935, and changed his name to Giorgio Nelson
Page. The Nelson Pages are "old Virginia", with the family estate,
I believe, near Amherst. I recall a visit there in 1947, and I
suppose it is still in the family.
On July 16, 1944, Page was arrested by American forces as
they entered Rome. He could not be charged with treason, as he
was an employee of his own government. Had Pound taken out
Italian citizenship, as Page had done, no charge could have been
lodged against him. Nevertheless, as an official of the defeated
regime, Page was kept in a concentration camp at Padua for
many months after the war. He wrote a book about himself and
the thousands of others who were imprisoned there. No charges
were ever brought against them, and they were finally released.
The New York Times (July 16, 1944), noting Page's arrest,
said that "Ezra Pound, who retained his American citizenship
while broadcasting for the Fascists, and is therefore wanted on
a treason charge, has not been apprehended and presumably is
in northern Italy."
Pound's greatest danger in 1944 was not the possibility of
arrest by the United States armed forces, but the possibility of
execution either at the hands of the Gestapo or of Communist
partisans. He had shielded a number of Jews from the Nazi exterminators,
several of them Jewish musicians whom he had hired
to play at the Rapallo concerts during the 1930s. The death
penalty was automatically incurred for hiding Jews.
A rabbi who had fled the Nazi terror in Budapest also came,
seeking aid, and Pound sheltered him for three weeks. The
Gestapo searched his rooms twice during this period, but he had
been warned aforetime by friendly townspeople, and the rabbi
was sent to hide in the butcher shop. The disgruntled Gestapo
officer took away some of Pound's letters and papers, but noth-