In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
What a coincidence, we just had a lovely experience of oral history with lovely Alfredo, our 84 year old olive pruner. He has lived in the same house all his life in the little 'borgo' or hamlet which is part of the larger Albergotti/Pandolfini estate. An estate going back to the 9th century when the Albergotti family came down from Northern Europe, part of the longobard (long beards!) invasion.
He was telling us of his experiences during and after the war; "we ate worse than the dogs"."We ground field seeds and field roots for food" and in telling this he ground one hand into the other to show the desperation of it. And the mountain on which we live, he told us, was a mass of fire due to the 10 day fighting between the retreating Germans and the Allies, here it was English and New Zealand troops. He told of the many dead who were found on the hill.
He also said how many had left for England and the US after the war because of the harsh conditions and it was not without a rye smile he said it was funny that now the English and Americans want to come and live here in Italy - 'you are all rich now' he said.
He spoke of soup kitchens and real poverty with shoes being made from pieces of wood and fabric/leather straps.
We do have a book, privately published, about the Arezzo experiences during the war, but I know of no other point of reference. When doing research for the articles I wrote for the Italymag. it was extremely difficult to get any information from the few documents I found and difficult to understand when I did find something because they were either so badly conserved or in illegible old italian/latin.
It would be fascinating to find out more about other local peoples' experiences, but I did enjoy researching the history of our house and learnt so much.
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
[quote=juliancoll;114440]Nielo, I'm sure Alan Lomax made some recordings in the fifties to preserve Italian folklore and historical stories passed down throught the generations. I'm only aware of this because I have quite a lot of the Lomax collection of Jazz and Blues recordings - will see what I can dig out for you that may be interesting.[/quote]
Indeed. ... (from memory) He used the work of Diego Carpitella, who I think is quoted on some of Lomax's Italian recordings, Locally there is an organisation for 'La storia della resistenza in Valle d'aosta' plus a number of wayside memorials to civilians who were shot as reprisals..
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
I had a funny thing - a visit from a seventy something year old who insisted that he had seen, aged about seven, his father (for the last time) going off to war (WWII) from my kitchen. I said no, it could not have been the kitchen, it must have been my (now) living room - because in that room the floor was raised below the window, (whereas in the kitchen it was not raised, and a small boy would not have been able to see over the cill).
Anyway - it doesn't matter from which room he saw his father going off to war: it was for me terribly tragic that from my house this (no longer) young child had seen his Dad for the last time - going off to lose his life fighting for what?
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
That's a really tragic story Nielo. Have you ever done any research into the brooch with local partisan organisations?
And it shows the dangers from [B]all[/B] sides in such a war.
What happened next?
In reply to A newbie all over again! by Annec
Moved to [url=http://www.italiauncovered.co.uk]Italia Uncovered[/url]
Some of the elderly people in our Umbrian village have vivid recollections of the Second World War years. A man now in his seventies was given chocolate by an American soldier and was so excited, he held it and didn't eat it. It melted away but he still remembers the overflowing pleasure of being given the chocolate. Others tell of their Mothers feeding English soldiers and the soldiers being shot almost immediately after they had left the house. There were German soldiers with horses camped here and they took all they could find in the way of animals and food....there are many stories some quite horrific and much has been forgiven, or so it seems to me.
Those who were born and bred in our village have choosen to privately publish books, of village photographs and past history so there is a record for future generations.