Our Grandparents During the Second World
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LICEO “J. SANNAZARO” DI NAPOLI – A. S. 2008-09 PROGETTO PILOTA: “I NONNI RICORDANO – OUR GRANDPARENTS REMEMBER” [NRGR] Giuseppe Caria spoke with his grandma Nicoletta (1936, Naples) My grandmother Nicoletta, born in 1936, told me that during World War II she lived near piazza Plebiscito and she had four sisters. One of her sisters, Erminia, was very ill and my grandmother’s father, Vincenzo Giuseppe, didn’t know how to help her. Some months later my grandmother’s father was told about a “market” near piazza Plebiscito where he could buy some medicine for the child. Some days later he went to the market and bought some “penicillin” but the market didn’t only sell medicine, but food, clothes and lots of other things too. But he couldn’t buy lots of things because at that time there wasn’t a lot of money and so he could only afford medicine that cost 2,000 lire; back then it was an enormous amount of money. My grandmother’s father came back home and gave the medicine to my grandmother’s sister but unfortunately the illness was too strong and because there wasn’t any food after some days she died when she was only 5 or 6 years old. WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM Alessandro Speranza spoke with his grandpa Mario Speranza My grandfather, Mario Speranza, was a horseman in the Second World War. One day received a call of duty to fight in the war and went to Albania. He fought for a lot of time and after various fights he was captured by German soldiers. So there was a long period of imprisonment for him and his friends. During this period Italian soldiers were badly treated by German soldiers and some of them died. He told me when I was child that those were terrible years for him, and for the other Italian soldiers. His mood changed because he was shocked by countless massacres and the dangers he faced. He told me that was a terrible experience because when he was in the battlefield he had to handle weapons and help many wounded, some of whom died. In fact, he was for a short time a doctor in his camp, until a bullet wounded him in the leg. After a long time English soldiers set him and his friends free and after a long trip he came back home with only a few wounds. For these reasons I think he is a hero. Clara Paolozzi spoke with Lioba Liebarth (1933, Vienna) In 1943 my grandmother Lioba Liebarth was ten years old: she was born in 1933 in Vienna. In that time the city of Vienna was under bombardment. Therefore, her father came back hastily from the front to take my grandmother and all family to the countryside in the south of Austria. WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM Then my grandmother with her mother and two brothers remained in the country far from the bombardment. My grandmother tells me that she listened to bombardments far away and she listened to airplanes going to Vienna. Ida Mallardo spoke with Giacomo Mallardo (Giugliano in Campania (NA)) My grandfather Giacomo Mallardo had two brothers, Giuseppe and Domenico, and during the war they were deported to concentration camps. But during the transport by train one of them escaped, near Florence, and managed to escape by hiding in the country. Thirty days later he returned to Giugliano. In the meantime, my grandfather that had stayed in Giugliano during the searches carried out by the Germans was hiding in a manhole in the garden. Brunello De Vita spoke with Giuseppe Leone (1914) My mother’s father, Giuseppe Leone, was born in 1914 in Naples. During the Second World War Giuseppe was an officer in the army. He was captured by the British in Libya at the beginning of the campaign, taken to Egypt and then India where he spent seven happy years. A good imprisonment! In Naples his family thought he was dead so when he arrived home they were all very surprised! Marco Pavanini spoke with Salvatore Macchiato My grandfather Salvatore Macchiato was an aviator during the Second World War. He fought in Africa but at the end WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM of the war he fell into the hands of the enemy and lived for a while into the camps of the English army in the English colonies in Africa. There he lived with English soldiers and with the inhabitants of the colonies, learning a lot of things about their culture and their way of life. When the war ended, he was able to come back home without problems and marry my grandmother. Camilla Ritieni spoke with Teresa Natale (Nusco (AV)) I have just one grandmother, Teresa Natale, who isn’t Neapolitan, but lives in Nusco, a small town near Avellino. She told me that in her village nobody understood why those things were happening and so they were more and more afraid. In such a small village, like Nusco, most people didn’t know what the ration card was for. My grandmother was only fifteen when many German lorries arrived in Nusco. At once the invader went in every garden and cut the trees’ branches to hide their lorries. Nusco is 1,000 metres above the sea and so the Americans thought that it was a German stronghold. For this reason, many planes fired against Nusco for some days. The people had to stay in their houses and weren’t able to go out. They could only eat bread. Some of them met in a cellar where they played cards or told jokes. However, everything finished when the Germans left the country. WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM Giovanni Elefante spoke with his grandma (1920) My grandmother, who is German, was born in 1920. At the beginning of World War II she had prepared the wedding with her boyfriend, who was a German aviator. During the war my grandmother left Berlin and went to Austria. But when the Russians attacked Berlin, my grandmother’s boyfriend was killed. So my grandmother, who was 20 years old, couldn’t return to Berlin because the trains were unavailable and so she went to Bavaria. After the end of the war she returned to Berlin and she met my grandfather. Simone Salvatore spoke with his grandparents All my grandparents were alive when Italy declared war to Germany in 1943. My mother’s father (Aldo Grassi, born in 1921) was studying to become a lawyer. He decided to become a partisan and he went to Umbria, where he fled to Gualdo Tadino, a town near Perugia. Then he became the first mayor of Gualdo Tadino after the war. Then he came back to Naples and he became a lawyer as he had always wished. My mother’s mother (Lavinia Cappello, born in 1927) was in Naples but she didn’t take part in the fight against the Germans, because she was only 15. My father’s father (Vincenzo Salvatore, born in 1927) was in Salerno, but he remembers, when he went to his grandfather’s house in Montecorvino Rovella, a town in the WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM country near Salerno. The SS arrived and started to take lots of young men to Germany. An uncle of my grandfather hid in an oven, so the SS didn’t find him. My great- grandfather (Donato Salvatore) was a cavalry officer; he had already fought in the First World War, and in 1938 he went to Ethiopia to fight against rebels. He went to Chevenna, Addis Abeba and Mogadiscio and led 300 men. He lived in a small house in the forest near Chevenna. He fought against rebels and he loved hunting. He had two horses and a little monkey, Nina, which he wanted to send to my grandfather, but she died. In 1939 he came back home, but in 1940 because of the war he had to return to Ethiopia. In 1941 he was captured by English troops and taken in Kenya where he stayed until the end of the war, in 1945. My father’s mother (Silvana Lettieri, born in 1936) was only 6 and she was in Como. Simone Macrina spoke with his grandparents My grandparents, named Antonia and Vincenzo Macrina, and Mafalda and Giovanni Morsa, told me that 1943 was a terrifying year: the Allies were well accepted by the population. Up to that moment, people were involved in the tyrant’s dictatorship from the first years of life, being organized in groups such as the “Figli della Lupa”, “Balilla” and “Giovani Fascisti”, which had the purpose of developing young soldiers. WWW.THREEMICEBOOKS.COM After the Allies’ arrival, people were supposed to keep a ration book in order to get the food they needed for survival: 1 kg of bread was supposed to feed a family of 5. Poverty was terrible; lice epidemics were very frequent. There were lots of SS looking for Jews. People tried to save them by hiding them in churches. Because of the poverty, people used to put all their savings and belongings in walls and to grind their corn secretly, in order not to pay taxes on flour. One of them, known as the bandit Giuliani, was shot. But what was absolutely disastrous were the air raids, which destroyed and devastated all the country. In Soverato, a bomb blew the front part of a train on another train. Moreover, the train from Chiaravalle to Soverato, after having been hidden in a gallery, was completely destroyed. My grandparents told me that little bombs shaped like pens were thrown by planes, killing above all children.