A Child Al Confino: The True Story of a Jewish Boy and His Mother in Mussolini's Italy (41 page)

The man was stroking the weeping woman's disheveled dark hair. “And where are you coming from?” His voice had a listless, emotionless ring.

“Everything will be better, you'll see,” Mamma said. Often I had heard my mother encourage others with inspiring conviction. This was not one of those times, for the words I just heard had a hollow ring. “Where are we from? Ospedaletto, just down the mountain.”

I sat next to Mother on the lower bunk facing the couple. We were exhausted, due more to our emotional state than physical fatigue. I had just leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes when Mamma let out a shriek that made me jump. She bolted from the bed.

“What is it?” I asked.

She turned and pointed to the cot. “My God, my God.” She kept repeating. I looked in that direction and wanted to throw up. A mass of ugly insects was crawling to and fro between the wooden planks and the wall. So great was their number that the little brown bugs were crawling over each other.

The couple from Naples made a forced sound almost like laughter. Mamma, in a shaky voice, asked, “What are those things?”

“Bedbugs,” the two answered as one. They never looked in the direction of what had caused my mother's anguish. They just seemed to know. “You don't know what they are?”

For three weeks we made our home in that odious room and slept on the infested boards. Every night before stretching out on the bare wood we roasted those bugs using precious paper, lit by even more priceless matches. “I don't know which is worse, the live bugs or the nauseating burned smell,” Mamma said. Necessity helped us overcome our revulsion. What really mattered was that we had a place to lie down.

In Montevergine we could not find anyone with a radio. However, because of people coming and going, we got more news than in the last three weeks in Ospedaletto. We heard that, after the initial stalemate on the beachhead in Salerno, Allied troops were now moving in our direction. Within days of our finding refuge at the monastery, the valley below had become a battlefield. The
boom
of big cannons and the
rat-a-tat-tat
of machine guns echoed off the mountains. At night, when the sound of small arms ceased, the fiery blazing of the artillery pierced, if only for short instants, the darkness in the valley and the clamor of war shattered the eerie silence. Yet, in spite of the tension the clamor created, I remained at the edge of the cliff embraced by the mountain gazing in awe at the spectacular fireworks-like scenes below.

The action in the valley was far enough removed for me to recover a bit of tranquility. At last I no longer had to hide from the menacing armed German soldiers nor stay confined in our two-room apartment. From where I stood, a few feet above the monastery, I had an unobstructed view of the whole valley, making me an unexpected spectator of what a battlefield was really like.

The fighting went on for most of the three weeks we stayed on the mountain. We had heard that the battles had been fierce, but we did not realize, until much later, how precarious the beachhead had been or how close the Allied troops had been from being pushed back into the sea. Many evenings I stood alone thinking of the foreign soldiers who were giving up their lives so that we might regain our liberty.

From our balcony in Ospedaletto, I had been able to see the Monastery of Montevergine. It appeared to be built on the mountain's ledge, almost at its peak. Now, being here made me realize that the abbey was built on a narrow flat space, much below the peak, from where one had a clear view of Avellino and the area around it. As birds fly, the distance to Avellino could not have been more than four or five miles. Aside from the officers' cadet school, there was no other military target there, but that did not seem to matter, for the city suffered days of relentless and horrible bombings.

A few days after we climbed up the mountain and had settled in, I faced the full, gruesome picture of war when wave after wave of British planes appeared over Avellino. At first I thought these planes, as they always had done in the past, were going to continue their flight toward Naples. Not this time. The double-fuselage bombers, flying at my eye level, started their dive to within a few hundred feet from the ground before restarting their ascent. At that very moment the planes' bellies opened and bombs, many, many bombs, left their bowels and fluttered in the air before achieving a spiraling speed. As the bombs hit their targets, I stood there near the cliff, spellbound.

Because of my vantage point, I could see as each bomb hit a house, some family's home, how it pierced the roof and how a three-story building crumbled in a cloud of dust. Structures that took months, perhaps years, to build collapsed faster than I could comprehend what was happening. I saw people, children, and animals escaping into the streets. Did I see them or was it my imagination? They were just little dots. I thought of those people dying only because they were there and was reminded of what Mother once had said when I asked why the Nazis were persecuting us: “Just because we are Jewish.”

The horror of what I saw made me shudder. And though my mind registered what my eyes were seeing, my brain was incapable of accepting it as reality. I followed each plane's maneuver and sometimes could even see the pilot's face, the leather cap, the goggles, the earphones. I had a front-row seat for this dreadful spectacle.

The air attack of that day and the ones that followed the next two days caught the city's populace by surprise. Later I heard that more than 4,000 innocent souls were snuffed out from a total population of about 30,000.

Within hours after the attack on Avellino, dazed survivors joined the hundreds of us who already had taken refuge in the monastery. They struggled up the mountain, a journey four miles longer than ours, in their nightgowns, robes, and slippers, or shoes without socks. Their eyes reflected the shock of what they had seen and, despite our own poor state, many of us looked at these pitiful folks, exhausted and disheveled, with compassion. I watched as strangers embraced each other and exchanged kisses and tears. Some of these refugees told us how they had been exposed to air-raid alarms for years, but, since no bombs had ever been dropped on the city, they had stopped going to air-raid shelters.

It was October and the weather was turning cold on the mountain. Without blankets, we slept in our clothes. The day we escaped Ospedaletto, Mother measured need versus practicality when selecting what to take with us in our small bag, taking little of some things and nothing of others. Except for a week's change of underwear, most of our clothing was left behind. We brought not a book nor a pencil, only one pair of shorts and no jacket but a light sweater.

We did bring one small bar of soap for our personal use, but not enough for doing laundry. Mother had become a wizard at improvising during our restricted lifestyle. Washing clothes was reduced to running icy water over a garment, hoping to release some of the superficial dirt. We did wash our underwear and, by doing it before going to sleep, we could hope that it would dry in the cool mountain air by morning.

For three weeks my body escaped the rigors of a bath. Even washing our hands and face was a major task, considering the sole fountain in the courtyard had to serve more than 1,500 people. I had no problem skipping a bath, although not taking one was only a slight departure from what we had finally adapted to in Ospedaletto for many months.

“I cannot tolerate being dirty,” Mother said. And almost every morning she left the room before anyone had awakened to get to that fountain and brave the icy mountain water running down her partially naked torso. I, not as bold or as concerned with my own cleanliness, chose to remain dirty and in bed rather than expose myself to snooping eyes or endure the water's chill.

Most people had fled without food, and food stores did not exist on this mountain spot. The two small stands peddling dried chestnuts and roasted hazelnuts that had been there on our arrival had soon disappeared when their merchandise was depleted.

On the fourth morning, Mother took me by the hand and together we walked to the monks' dining room. It was an immense hall, with very long, bare wooden tables and benches instead of chairs. Mamma asked for the friar in charge, marched up to the man and, with authority in her voice that fear often creates, spoke to him. “I don't care about myself, but you must give my son something to eat.”

His arms folded inside the brown vestment sleeves, the monk explained why they could not provide food for me. “
Signora
, it's just not possible to feed 2,000 people. We don't have enough for ourselves.”

But the explanation did not impress my mother and, because she refused to accept no for an answer, beginning that evening and for the remainder of our three-week stay, two Jews, Mamma and I, sat with seventy Catholic priests, grateful to secretly partake in their prayers and a small bowl of warm beans.

We did not have breakfast in the mornings except on rare occasions when someone shared their food with us. More than 1,500 people found refuge within the walls of Montevergine and, without regard to their own needs and misfortunes, when social status had lost all meaning, almost everyone displayed that generosity of spirit which is so much part of the Italian nature.

The bombing of Avellino had ceased, but the intense fighting could still be heard in the distance beyond the mountains toward Salerno. We felt cut off from the rest of the world. The occasional arrival of new refugees brought confusing news of what was happening elsewhere. Adding a kind of black humor to the very tragic events, everyone had a different version of the same facts. Then we heard the unimaginable. Ten days after the bombing, thousands of bodies were still decaying on the streets of Avellino.

During our first week on the mountain, the superficial calm was disrupted by the clamorous arrival of a German half-track, which stopped outside the monastery gate. No one seemed to know what to make of it. The children milled around the military vehicle while the adults kept their distance. One soldier jumped out the rear and attempted to speak with the onlookers. He spoke German and, as he approached them, people stepped backward. Some women even ran away screaming.

“
Deutsch sprechen
?” the soldier shouted.

Realizing no one else could understand what he wanted and forgetting the fear German soldiers had engendered less than a month before, I called out, “
Ya
!
Ich spreche Deutsch
.” As those words popped from my mouth, panic set in. How could I have done such a stupid thing?

“This kid speaks German!” the man said. I even saw a smile on his face. He had walked back from the small crowd and was talking to the men inside the vehicle. From the stripes on his sleeve I guessed he was either a corporal or a sergeant.

He approached me and placed his hand on my shoulder. “We need to set up an observation post. Can you help me find a good spot?”

Why was he asking me? Did he really think I would know the requirements for an observation post? “I'm not sure where,” I said. “Perhaps a little farther up. I've only been here a few days.” I should never have spoken to him. Why did I always get myself into trouble? I was so nervous.

The soldier invited me to join him and his three men on the half-track. “Come with us.” What an alluring thought: Me inside a half-track. How could I even think about doing it? Going with German soldiers? Was I totally insane? Then I looked around to see if
Mutti
was anywhere in sight. The man must have sensed my hesitation. “It's all right. We'll bring you right back.”

Mother was nowhere to be seen and so, ignoring my inner conflict, I allowed my fascination with the military and curiosity to prevail. With the helping hand of the soldier in charge, I climbed onto the German vehicle. For a fleeting moment I even hoped that they might let me shoot the machine gun. Benedetti did. I looked outside, certain to be the envy of every boy in the square when horror, Mother was there in full view. Even from a distance I could see her face was ashen white. I shut my eyes and prayed that the color was caused by fear and not rage.

We rode up the small stretch of road, about one hundred or more meters, to where it came to an end. Beyond lay a vast expanse of grassy fields, where, during the season, women from Ospedaletto would pick wild strawberries.

“What do these stripes mean?” I asked the soldier who had spoken to me.

He was a sergeant, he told me. When we stopped, the sergeant took a fast look around and decided to relieve himself behind a tree, after which he ordered his man to drive him back down.

When we reached the main gate unsure of what to expect, I said, “I must get off now.”

The vehicle was rolling quite rapidly down the hill and had just passed the monastery. Mother was standing there.

“Sure, sure,” the sergeant said. He ordered his driver to back up to the gate. “
Geh zurück
!”

I said a short goodbye, jumped off and ran to my mother. There was no doubt. Fear was not the only emotion that had created pallor on her face. It was mostly anger. A great deal of anger. As the half-track pulled away, clumsily swaying down the uneven road, the sergeant called out in German, “You must come to visit me!”

My mother grabbed my arm and gave it a snap. “I just died a million deaths,” she shouted under her breath. “Do you realize that? We came here to escape the Germans and you jump on their tank and leave me standing here not knowing where they were taking you!”

“It's not a tank,
Mutti
. It's a half-track.”

My mother's face changed from white to crimson red. “A tank, a half, whatever. I should beat the daylights out of you, and if you correct me again, I might still do it.”

For the rest of the day I kept quiet and stayed out of Mother's way. I had gotten in enough trouble for one day.

The next morning I went for a walk down the main road with a secret hope to see my German friend. I never told my mother where I was going for I was certain of her reaction. The unit had set up an observation post a few hundred yards down the road. I spied the vehicle parked on the edge of the cliff, a tall antenna planted in the ground and a tent erected to one side. I lay on the ground and, hidden by a thick bush, watched the men's activities. For a time I remained unnoticed, torn about what to do. These were my enemies, the people who, I came to realize, were our curse, the cause of our having to leave Vienna and to live like vagabonds for the past sixty-six months. My father, my dear
Omama
, my Aunt Stefi, my grandparents, everyone I loved might still be prisoners and forced to work on some farm for them. I remembered what Aunt Stefi had written from Germany. Why did I want to be with these people?