WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, GRANDPA?
By Emanuele Di Prima
(As an assignment for the US/VA Honors history course at Chantilly HS, in Fairfax VA, students were tasked to interview a person who had some experiences related to a conflict that involved the United States. Emanuele Di Prima, a Senior at Chantilly HS, decided to interview his grandfather Romeo Sabatini who as a little boy witnessed first- hand the German occupation and subsequent allied liberation of Rome during the Second World War. Maybe we can find others among our older members who may be willing to write or be interviewed about their experiences in Italy during the Second World War, and present these in our Notiziario for the benefit and enlightenment of the new generation. Editor’s note)
Students learn in many different ways: through reading, through writing about what was read which helps memorize content, visually through images and videos, and listening. Listening during an oral interview is a little different because it allows the listener to receive more than just words. Listening is about capturing the underlying message the speaker is trying to convey, his feelings, and his opinions. This is why I caught the occasion to interview someone like my grandfather Romeo about his childhood experiences during and after World War II. He was able, through his recollections, to give a more significant history lesson than any textbook paragraph. I interviewed my grandfather because I believe he is a great resource, as I often chat with him about historical events. He has lived moments in history that I study in textbooks, and his stories can produce emotions that textbooks will never be able to give. To fulfill my history assignment, I asked my grandfather to tell me all about his memories as a child in World War II, especially during the liberation of Rome in 1944-45 and after.
In September 1943 Italy broke the alliance with Nazi Germany, joining France, England and the United States, and was considered a traitor by Germany who retaliated brutally by invading Italy. My grandfather recalls one evening when his father came home all upset and worried, telling that the Germans were stopping trolley cars and arresting people left and right. Much later on he found out that the Germans had gathered more than 300 Italians to be killed as reprisal for a partisan bomb that killed some German soldiers only a few blocks from where my grandfather lived.
On July 19, 1943, American aircraft bombed the Rome Termini and Tiburtina railroad stations, also killing about 3,000 Italians in nearby buildings. My grandfather, who lived near the Termini station, remembers visiting the bombed Termini station a few days later, and was able to recall seeing the destroyed buildings around the station. During these bombing raids, my grandfather’s family took refuge in the bomb shelter across the street from where they lived. He only remembers people crying and shouting during those horrible nights in the shelter. A few bombs that missed the Tiburtina station landed in the Verano cemetery nearby, and my grandfather ironically commented that some people were killed twice.
10 One particularly joyful event was the liberation of Rome by American soldiers, in 1944. When U.S. troops came to free Rome from German occupation, after a few battles in the suburbs, security was established throughout downtown Rome. On June 4, 1944, the American soldiers entered Rome and paraded through the major downtown streets. My grandfather remembers many Italians greeting the soldiers, hugging them, kissing them and shouting gloriously. This impacted my grandfather very much since he felt, along with his family and all the other Italians, a sense of freedom. Now he could go freely to the Villa Borghese park, or walk fearlessly the length of Via Piemonte to his elementary school, without encountering the ever-present SS guards in front of the German SS Command on Via Piemonte. My grandfather explained with a chuckle that he thought the SS on the guards’ helmets stood for the year 44 (It was 1944).
Days after the liberation of Rome, my grandfather would accompany his older brother who sold wine out of his little cart to American soldiers encamped in the Villa Borghese park. His parents were not aware of such illegal dealings. One day they were both “arrested” by U.S. soldiers who brought them home on a jeep and searched the whole apartment for the wine. They found none, as his 13-year old brother would go directly to a wine shop near the park to pick up the wine to be sold to the soldiers. After this incident and a scolding from their father, my great grandfather, who at the time was an Italian police officer, they stopped selling wine, and upon the suggestion of their mother, my great grandmother, they tried without success, to sell silk scarves to the soldiers.
Another event involving an American soldier also happened in the Villa Borghese park. As my grandfather was walking towards the children’s movie house, appropriately named “Topolino” or Mickey Mouse Theater, he saw an American soldier throwing rocks at a young man. The kid had tried to steal something from the soldier’s tent, and was now running away. My grandfather described the soldier’s throws as powerful and fast, just like a baseball player.
One last anecdote involved my grandfather’s first experience with the English language. The first few English words he learned were “please give me chocolate”, and one day on his way to the park, he mustered enough courage to approach an American soldier and pronounce the fateful words. The soldier was the first black person he ever saw. He vividly remembers the soldier laughing, wide eyed, throwing up his hands, indicating he had no chocolate.
Many Italian kids at the time decided to learn English, just to have some candy from the soldiers; others even invited soldiers to their homes. The soldiers usually brought white bread loaves to the families. Sometimes the loaves were wrapped in comic pages from the American Sunday newspaper. This is when my grandfather began to read American comics as a little kid.
Overall, these various events and the presence of American soldiers had a positive impact on my grandfather, and on most Italians as well. Italians were getting used to living with the Americans and joyfully interacted with them. His childhood was impacted by the war, but also by the end of it, which caused his family to experience cultural and economic changes. In fact, a few years after the war, my grandfather and his family emigrated to the United States joining relatives in New York.
My grandfather told these stories, sometimes seriously, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a chuckle, sometimes with tears in his eyes: it is history, and various unpleasant events have occurred that are still part of his memories and are worthy to be handed down to us. From these stories, we should understand how precious our grandparents and older relatives are, because with just a few words, they can describe events that impacted their life and thus emphasize some major historical event much more vividly than a textbook narrative. I believe that listening is not only just understanding what is told, but it is also recreating the story in our minds as each word stimulates our own imagination.