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Interview with Paola Giorgina Pasini
Paola Giorgina Pasini provides details of her early life in a family of agricultural workers and favourably compares their conditions with those living in urban areas. She recalls the ominous sight of target indicators and flares and remembers…
Interview with Alessandra Rivalta
Alessandra Rivalta recalls her early life, first as member of Opera Nazionale Balilla then as an undergraduate student at the faculty of humanities. She describes the start of the war, early anti-aircraft precautions and wartime life: food shortage;…
Interview with Marino Ferrari
Marino Ferrari recalls his early life as an engineer at Pavia arsenal, and later in Catanzaro and Verona. Describes his life as an Italian military internee in East Prussia, working in different lumberyards. Speaks with affection of the German…
Interview with Renate Rothaler
Renate Rothaler (b. 1937) recounts her wartime experiences in Gotha, where she lived with her mother and sister, while her father was drafted. She mentions a bombing in spring 1944 when she watched ‘silver birds’ that soon started to drop bombs,…
Interview with Rosanna Giungi
Rosanna Giungi (b. 1933) describes how Pippo disrupted daily life in wartime, especially affecting those close to the Modena-Brennero and Modena-Verona railway lines. She reminisces about the sight of Germany-bound trains packed with people…
Interview with Luciana Cella Guffanti
Luciana Cella Guffanti (b. 1932) describes the role played by officers of the Unione Nazionale Protezione Antiaerea during the bombings of Milan, especially when they had to persuade reluctant people to go to the shelters. She describes an occasion…
Interview with Lidia Barberis
Lidia Barberis (b. 1934) remembers her early life in Turin and Piedmont, under the constant threat of bombing. She describes her father being taken away by the SS, the daily chores and a precarious trip by horse-drawn cart. She also describes the…
Interview with Eva Brossmer
Eva Brossmer (b. 1925) remembers the incessant bombing of Berlin by the Allied Forces and explains how she and her mother fled to Südharz, trying to avoid the advancing Russians. She explains how German broadcasts did not mention their advance and…
Interview with Helga Cent-Velden
Helga Cent-Velden (b. 1926) recounts her life in Berlin, living under constant threat of bombing. She describes how her father tried to locate a suitable air raid shelter for the family and, especially, how he ruled out the Shell House because of a…
Enrico da Ronca persuades the partisan 'Romano' to stop the violence
In a town square, a figure in priest's clothes approaches a partisan who is brandishing a sub-machine gun. Two other figures in uniform are featured on the right hand side. Three Italian flags are visible on a bell tower with a clock.
Label reads…
Label reads…
Interview with Matteo Basso
Matteo Basso (b. 1934) recalls some foods he ate during the war, at school for breakfast, he used to eat a slice of polenta and two figs. He also talks about his experience in being caught out in the open when a formation of aircraft dropped bombs…
Interview with Silvana Morganti
Silvana Morganti (b. 1924) recalls the bombing of the San Lorenzo neighbourhood in Rome, in which she describes the sight of dead people, a destroyed shelter, and children waiting for their dead mothers to return. Silvana also explains that she…
Interview with Giovanni Monchiero
Giovanni Monchiero (b. 1923) gives a detailed account of his experience in labour camps in Germany: he started working at a train station, but it was bombed. He then moved to the Opel garage, but it was also bombed. He describes an occasion when,…
Interview with Delia Cardini
Delia Cardini recalls her childhood as an orphan in a boarding school and how, at the age of 10, she moved to Milan. She remembers how the Fascists used castor oil to humiliate their opponents. Delia also describes how, after a night bombing, she was…
Interview with Piercarlo Debernardi
Piercarlo Debernardi (b. 1928) describes how his father built the family home next to the convent of La Visitazione in Turin, a house now considered a landmark in the city. He gives an account of wartime building regulations, stressing the…
Interview with Lidia Fabris and Alfonso Fridiani
Lidia Fabris and Alfonso Fridiani remember 'Pippo'. Alfonso Fridiani recalls how his truck was saved from one of 'Pippo’s' attacks by a partisan. Lidia Fabris remembers the fear she felt when 'Pippo' fired off flares. She describes an incident in…
Interview with Maria Caterina Siccardi
Maria Caterina Siccardi (b. 1924) remembers attending the funeral of a young soldier and her fear of being bombed. She also describes the makeshift shelter her grandfather built and how she rushed to take shelter in it every time an aircraft…
Interview with Eraldo Bessone
Eraldo Bessone (b. 1925) remembers the bombing of the Borgo San Paolo neighbourhood in Turin and how, due to the extensive damage it suffered, people started calling it the 'Stalingrad neighbourhood'. He also describes how the extensive damage led to…
Interview with Irma Ferranti
Irma Ferranti recalls a day when there were four bombings in Turin. She gives a complete account of the last one and how she ran through the street in search of shelter, before trying to take cover under a bridge. She goes on to remember the sound of…
Interview with Maria Domanovszky
Maria Domanovszky (b. 1937) tells how she threw herself into a swampy ditch when under fire and how she lay down praying and hoping to get back home safely. She describes German soldiers with torn and dirty uniforms escaping from a burning forest.…
Interview with Burckhard Kuck
Burckhard Kuck (b. 1925) tells the story of a 63-year-old mirror, a present from his fellow inmates when he was detained in a prisoner of war camp in England. He tells how the object reminds him of the lack of mirrors in the camp and of the fact that…
Interview with Christoph Wagner Brausewetter
Christoph Wagner Brausewetter (b.1929) recalls the hardships civilians endured inside a shelter, the risks involved and the fact they spent more time there than at home. He maintains that the worst year was 1943, when aircraft were no longer able to…
Interview with Inge Heinrich
Inge Heinrich (b.1922) describes the bombing of the Berlin borough of Kreuzberg and recalls how she had dreamt of being buried alive under the rubble but surviving in the end. She tells of how the patent agency building, in which she was working, was…
Interview with Margarete Meyer
Margarete Meyer (b. 1936) describes the Dresden bombing, 13 February 1945, and recalls how her mother reacted to the alarm. She rushed to the shelter and took some belongings, including what she thought was her confirmation dress. Margarete explains…
Interviews with Jaun Schauerte
Jaun Schauerte (b.1936) recalls rushing to the shelter with a suitcase and a back pack. He remembers one night when his grandmother fell under the heavy weight of the rucksack and nobody stopped to help her. He also recalls the Bremen bombing, while…