ITALY: The Black Panther

Around the Piazza Giudea, in the heart of Rome's ancient ghetto, where loyalties are fierce and memories are long, people still remember when Celeste di Porto was a quiet, intent little girl. Like other children in the ghetto, she grew up in garbage-strewn alleys, amid the antique squalor that sometimes breeds keen wits. She did well in school and read much. Said her aunt last week: "My God, once they start reading, it's all over."

But it was not something that she read in a book that turned Celeste di Porto into the...