Friday, March 16, 2013
“They tried to grab him, but he was a big strong guy,” Mario
said. “He threw his shoulders back and stretched his arms wide to push the men
away and free himself. Then he ran as fast as he could and hid. Otherwise he
would have been beaten.”
Last year I asked third cousin Mario Seghieri and his wife
Loretta Forassiepi about their experiences during World War 2. Now that I have done
some additional studies on that era, I want to ask more questions, but this
time about what life was like under the Fascist regime. Once again, I am
accompanied by Elena Benvenuti, who serves as translator and also adds some of
her own insights. We dropped by their house around 5 p.m. and chatted for an
hour.
Mussolini became prime minister of Italy in 1922 and declared
himself Il Duce early in 1925, running
a de facto dictatorship until he was deposed by the Italian Grand Council in
1943. Mario was born in 1924 and Loretta in 1932, so what they recall of the
early years of Fascism comes from stories told by their parents and other
relatives. Mario briefly served in the Italian army in 1943 in a story I
recounted last year in “Mario
Seghieri, World War 2, Montecarlo and the Gothic Line,” and which I have
recently updated with more information they gave me today. Mario and Loretta
were 21 and 13, respectively, when the war ended in 1945.
Historians usually point out some positive aspects of Italy’s
government during Mussolini’s leadership: Swamps were drained to create more
usable land, trains ran on time, large companies were established and national
pride, at least on the surface, appeared strong.
However, when asked about the positive aspects of Fascism,
neither Mario nor Loretta could recall anything, and they immediately launched
into discussions of everything they disliked about it.
Mario Seghieri |
“Era cattivo,” Mario
said. My dictionary shows cattivo can
be translated bad or evil, and based on the way Mario emphasized it, I think
the latter translation is what he meant.
“You had to belong to the Fascist party,” Loretta said. “If
you didn’t want to sign up, you were beaten and you were drugged with a sort of
oil that made you go to the toilet. They would give it in such quantity that
you could never be able to reach the toilet in time, and this was very, very embarrassing
for the people.”
Every family had to register as a member of the party.
Without a registration card, a family was not eligible to receive bread or any
government services.
She also recalls that one of her family’s neighbors was loyal
to the Fascist party, and he would spy on the community and turn in the names
of those he suspected of being anti-Fascist.
Loretta Forassiepi |
“It was a strategy of terror within the neighborhood,” she
said. “If he reported someone to the head of the village, the Fascists would
send an expedition to your house. Anyone could get you in trouble.
“You tried to remain hidden. The only way to exchange ideas
was after supper, during the veglia. Families
would go to the houses of their friends and relatives and play cards and talk among
themselves.”
Loretta’s father hated his Fascist party registration card
and vowed to destroy it, but his family needed it to receive its ration of
bread. His brother urged him to keep his party card and stay silent so as not
to stir up trouble, and the two would argue.
Mario’s father Bruno had been overheard speaking out against
Fascism by a spy who reported him to the local Fascist leaders. He was called in,
supposedly for a conversation, but he soon found himself surrounded by men accusing
him of disloyalty, and he realized they were planning to seize him.
Bruno and Rosa and six of their children. Mario is in the lower right. Taken in about 1927. |
I wondered how these neighbors with opposing political alliances
regarded each other after the war, but Mario and Loretta have little to say,
partly because they were too young to have been involved with the politics, and
partly because it is something that people want to put behind them. Mario
remembers in later years being acquainted with a man whose father had been head
of the Fascists in nearby Chiesanuova, but out of politeness, Mario never brought
up the subject. “We never discussed these things,” Mario said. “After Mussolini
was shot, that was the end.”
He doesn’t recall any punishment or retaliation meted out to
the local Fascist leaders, but that could be in part because they made themselves
scarce. “Some of the Fascists had to go into hiding themselves until things
calmed down and they could come out again,” Mario said.
Did the war have an impact on the way the older generation
views Germans today? When I asked this, Mario and Loretta both started talking
with great animation and at the same time, so I don’t know exactly what they
said, but Elena summarized: “The feeling remains with their generation that the
Germans are cruel. Not with my generation, but my mother has the same bad
feelings and preconception about Germans. It comes out even when we watch the
Olympic Games.”
Now the conversation turns to other topics, and I find out a
few more interesting details of life here in San Salvatore. Mario’s father and
grandfather were contadini, and in
all likelihood so were all of their ancestors for the last 1000 or more years.
Three of Mario’s children and some of his grandchildren now run the family
farm, which not long after the war changed from growing grains and
vegetables to growing flowers and other plants.
Now everything they plant has already been pre-ordered, so
there is little risk of their work going to waste. The business is going well
enough to support the families of Ivano, Fausto and Fiorella, but in Mario’s
working days, it was a struggle to support just his one family with four
children. He can recall a friendly competition between his family and those of cousins
Sergio and Pietro to see who would stay out the latest in the day working on
their farms.
“We would harvest the colored carnations first and save the
white ones for the evening, because we could still see the white ones as the
light of day was fading away,” Loretta said. “The children would be calling us
to come home.
“The new generation doesn’t understand why we worked so
hard. But it was the only way to live, to make enough money to feed everyone.”
I also found out that Mario had a knee operation recently,
and he is able to walk better than he could last year. He has a treadmill in the
kitchen, which he uses several times a day when the weather is too wet or cold
to walk outside. For a year before the operation, he had been in constant pain
that kept him chair-bound much of the time. “Working the field was too much,”
Elena said. “You really wear the bone.”
Back: Seghiero and bike part, Anita Seghieri, unknown. Front: unknown, Ruggero Seghieri, Rosina Seghieri. |
I also find out something I had wanted to know about the
Seghieri bicycle shop in the Albergi district of Pescia. It was started by Mario’s
late brother Girardengo around 1950. He built the shop and the house above it
before he married in 1954. This dispels my romantic notion that the shop had
been in continuous service since the days my dad’s uncles Ruggero and Seghiero
Seghieri were boys. We have a photo of Seghiero, known in my family as Uncle
Jim, holding a piece of a bike when he was a young man in Italy, and we were told that he built racing bikes before he came to America in 1909. No doubt he
did, but it was not part of the same business that exists today.
Lucy and I bought both of our bikes from the Seghieri bike
shop in 2011, and I liked the thought that the place might have some distant
tie to Uncle Jim, who was a mechanic in America. However, the only connection
is that perhaps mechanical abilities run in the family gene pool.
Mario has turned 89 this week, and both he and Loretta are
sharp of mind and active around the house and yard, and it is always a pleasure
to visit with them. I hope that the good health and longevity that they enjoy
is also part of the family gene pool.
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Elena Benvenuti is a tour guide who offers cooking classes and private personal tours of Lucca and the surrounding areas. For more information, see her web site: Discover Lucca with Elena.
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Elena Benvenuti is a tour guide who offers cooking classes and private personal tours of Lucca and the surrounding areas. For more information, see her web site: Discover Lucca with Elena.
This is really interesting. I am currently reading "Verdi's Dream" by Lisa Taruschio and it starts with Mussolini's death and then goes back to a few months earlier. Anyhow, I am very interested in Italian WWII information right now.
ReplyDeleteReading this reminds me what an easy life I have had in the the US in my 52 years. So many in other country's have had to deal with so much strife.
ReplyDeleteCalvin