Our Life in Italy

By Mauro Ghersi

The book begins during the Second World War in Italy and leads up to the modern time, with a flashback to Italy's Independence war in 1861. The author follows historical facts by describing the lives of his colorful family and friends. It is the point of view of a boy born in the war and his experience of growing up in a post-war period. The Italian economic miracle, the conflicts between Catholics and Communists, the working experiences during the period of social and political turmoil due to domestic terrorism and his job travels are also described. The author mixes these historical moments with his personal life experience. He narrates the trips to the United States to meet his wife's American family and how, in the end, the loss of his wife made it imperative for him to leave Italy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643504476

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Our Life in

Italy

Mauro Ghersi

Copyright © 2018 Mauro Ghersi

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2018

ISBN 978-1-64350-446-9 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64350-447-6 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

A Note

I began writing with the purpose of telling my grandchildren why and how we arrived in the United States. I found the writing came to me naturally, and I enjoyed analyzing our ancestors’ lives. I started with my family name, Ghersi. Then I turned my eye to my mother’s name, Spinelli. I found I had more information on the Spinelli side. In the end, I located the family names of nine out of sixteen of my great-great-grandparents.

Two family names are on my father’s side: Ghersi and Speranza.

Seven family’s names are from my mother’s side: Spinelli, Cuneo, Aglioni, Recchia, Urbani, Tani, Rossignoli.

These families lived at the beginning of the nineteenth century, some coming from Northern Italy (Ghersi, Speranza, Cuneo) and all the others from Central Italy. They are my descendants, and I could bear the name of any of them.

In this book, I told the stories of the people I have information about, but all of them are part of my lineage.

By researching my ancestors, I have revisited the history of Italy from its independence wars (1861–1870) through Fascism and World War II and up until today. It was very interesting to look with today’s eyes at the history I’ve lived through.

My mother and my aunt are the ones who told me these stories. My aunt also wrote a biography, which I mentioned in the bibliography.

The events I have spoken about are my point of view; someone else might have described them in another way. But this is my story, the story of what inspired me on the journey that brought my family and me from the suburbs of Rome to the United States.

I should like to thank my friend and teacher, Angela Rayburn. Without her contribution, I would never be able to write this story.

Chapter 1

The Beginning, Monteverde

(1942–1945)

The generations pass; men’s minds take new directions, and the acts of experience become a lantern hung out in abandoned streets.

—Carlo Cattaneo (Italian Patriot)

My childhood was dominated by the mysterious charm of the war and the related stories. I was born in the middle of World War II in Rome, August 1, 1942.

The war brought fear and fascination. Fear because the Anglo-American planes bombed Rome from July 19, 1943, until her release on July 4, 1944, for fifty-one times¹, almost once a week, and everyone was afraid. My mother used to take me to the shelter in her arms with my name written on my shirt so I could be identified in case of disaster. Fear because my father and three uncles were at the front and nobody knew if they would return alive.

When the bombing started, I was about one year old, and at the end of it, I was almost two. All my second year of life was spent with the intermittent sound of alarms announcing the arrival of bombers. That year remained deeply impressed in my mind. One day, while I was walking with my mother in Monteverde, a plane flew above us. Suddenly, my mother found herself alone, having lost me.

She looked back and saw me far away lying on the dirt. In my mind, it was a warplane, and I was trying to save myself.

My mother, Anna, and my aunt, Margherita, who holds me in her arms. It was winter, and I was a few months old. We were on Via dell’ Anagrafe. The picture was taken by a street photographer.

Another memory of that year is a bombing attack. It is an image that I may have formed from listening to the family stories about the war, but it now appears to me as clear memory. It was an afternoon, and I was on the terrace of San Pietro in Montorio. This church is downhill from the Gianicolo (where the Catholic tradition says the Apostle Peter was crucified with the head down). From there you can see the south of Rome where the San Giovanni’s church towers above the neighborhood. In my memory, I saw many bombers flying over the bell tower of the church bombing all the surroundings, and I remember the smoke and the noise of falling bombs. The San Giovanni area was attacked on February 12, 1944², when I was eighteen months old, and somehow that event has been impressed in my mind.

World War II started on September 1, 1939, about three years before I was born. It began when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Italy remained nonbelligerent, even though she was Germany’s ally. Eight months later, Germany defeated the Allied forces which meant the conquest of France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Mussolini felt the war would soon end and joined Germany in declaring war on Great Britain and France on June 10, 1940.

He was wrong. The war wouldn’t be short. France was on her knees, but Britain was not alone. The same day (June 10, 1940), Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia declared war on Italy. One year later, the United States entered the war on Britain’s side.

Air strikes were the new war strategy of that time, and while Germany and Italy bombed London, the Allies bombed Germany and Italy. About that strategy, in July 1941, the American President Roosevelt wrote to the British Prime Minister Churchill: We must subject Germany and Italy to a ceaseless and ever-growing air bombardment. These measures may themselves produce an internal convulsion or collapse.³

During this time, my mother and I lived with her parents on Via Algardi 8 in Monteverde (Green Hill). We lived with my grandfather, Giuseppe, my grandmother, Filomena, and my aunts, Margherita, Felicita, and Marisa. It was a world of women. The men were not there, my father was not there, and I wondered about him a lot. How was he? What was he doing? Will I as a male have to do what he was doing? Will I be able to? These questions would accompany me throughout all my youth.

I first saw my father during his leave when I was about two years old. I asked everyone, Is he my father? Finally, I could meet him! But the beginning of our relationship was not good. With his arrival, I lost the full attention of my mother, and I didn’t like that at all. I was very jealous. I screamed at her, Get that man out of your bed! My father’s leave was short, so this quarrel was put off, but, indeed, it occurs to me now that children know very well how to be selfish.

*****

A second wartime event, which is linked to my childhood, is a historical coincidence about the church of St. Pancrazio (an ancient church with catacombs of the Roman age). The church was a block away from my grandfather’s house, so I was baptized there the day I was born. It was also the church where the Pope of that time, Pius XII, was baptized sixty-six years before. If we add that this Pope, when Rome was first bombed in WWII, went in San Lorenzo neighborhood among the injured people and soiled his garment with the blood of casualties, we can easily understand that my connection with him was profound.

San Pancrazio Church as I photographed it in 1969.

This first bond with the Pope and the following religious feelings I formed were gradually overwhelmed by real events. I later found out that Pope Pius XII and the previous Pope Pius XI were both colluded with Fascism to gain political power in Italy.

*****

The third childhood link I have with war is related to the walks I took with my maternal grandfather, Giuseppe, and it is referred to as a battle fought about a century before my birth. It was the beginning of the Italian unification movement called Risorgimento (Resurgence).

Along San Pancrazio Street, the road that goes from the church of San Pancrazio to the Gianicolo, we traveled beside the Vascello villa’s walls. On the left side, just at the entrance of the villa, I could see the cannonballs that French troops fired against Garibaldi’s army. Garibaldi was defending the newly born Republic of Rome in 1849. The cannonballs were made of steel, big as a melon, and embedded in the rocks. What a mystery!

At that time, when Italy was not yet unified, the attack of the French troops for the reconquest of Rome was focused on the Gianicolo. The French intervention shattered this first revolt of the Italian Risorgimento, who had briefly ousted Pope Pius IX from his temporal power. At that time, Rome was the capital of the Papal State. What is now modern Italy was composed of seven different states or kingdoms. The Papal State was one of them and extended throughout Central Italy.

The defense of the Roman Republic on Gianicolo occurred during the first phase of the Italian revolution (1848–1849). Other Italian cities were also involved: Palermo, Milan, and Venice. Those riots, while all defeated, were the premise for the Unification War, which twelve years later allowed the birth of the Kingdom of Italy.

The Roman Republic survived only five months, but the Garibaldi’s gallantry in the defense of the city became one of the most inspiring stories for the future Italian Risorgimento. Refusing to accept defeat, Garibaldi led a few thousand men out of Rome and through Central Italy. He maneuvered to avoid French armies and reached the neutral Republic of San Marino. From then on, he was the hero of two worlds. His courage and determination not to surrender were a lesson in patriotism for his fellow countrymen.⁴

Political Italy in 1849 at the time of the Roman Republic Rebellion.

[Italy’s area (116,347 mi²) is comparable with Alabama+Florida’s area (118,174 mi²)].

European newspapers covered the insurrection at Rome. British readers kept abreast of the goings-on in Italy through periodicals like the The Illustrated London News, a weekly magazine which reported several engravings about the event.

One of them, reported below, shows the Pope’s Palace being assaulted by the people of Rome. The Palace, so beautifully engraved by an English journalist, was the Quirinale. The same Quirinale is now the residence of Italy’s President.

According to the Britannica, the Catholic Church, over the course of centuries, had developed an elaborate organizational structure headed by the Pope; the facto was the oldest continuing absolute monarchy in the world.⁵

The Insurrection at Rome. The attack on the Pope’s Palace. (The Illustrated London News. December 2, 1848)

Busts of Garibaldians in Gianicolo

When years later the Kingdom of Italy was unified with the final defeat of the Pope and the appointment of Rome as its capital (1870), the new Italian Congress dedicated the Park of Gianicolo to Garibaldi and his soldiers. Marble busts of patriots were placed in the park. They surround Garibaldi and stand on their pedestals