MUNICH, MONACO, MALGOLO – and back

Our father worked so hard all his life that there was no time to reflect on the past. He died at the early age of sixty-five when we were all still too young to really have asked searching questions.

Papa used only stock phrases when he talked about his time as a forced laborer. It was a time of “grandi deprivazioni,” great deprivation, he would say. He lost all his teeth in Neuaubing and weighed only 37 kilos when he returned home. After that there was a great silence in Italy about this chapter, everyone just wanted to forget. But the body doesn’t forget. Essentially our father died of the long-term effects of his time in Neuaubing, his heart, his kidneys, eventually everything failed.

We know that there were Reichsbahn maintenance workshops in Neuaubing, where broken rail cars were repaired. But we have sometimes suspected that he worked in the camp kitchen, because he often used to tell a story of other prisoners who looked for food in the kitchen waste. And he would whisper to them that he would put a package of food leftovers in the trash for them in the evenings. On the other hand, if he worked in the kitchen, why did he lose all his teeth?

Well, seven years later there was this incredible mix-up. He was working in an ice-cream parlor in San Remo when a friend offered him a job in “Monaco.” Papa thought he was going to the Cote d’Azur, but instead he founded himself in Monaco di Baviera of all places. In Munich, in other words. He worked in the fancy Ristorante Roma on Maximilianstraße and that’s where he met our mother. All four of us were born in Munich and we grew up in an apartment at Schwanthalerstraße 58, directly on the Theresienwiese, where the Oktoberfest is held every year. Later he even opened his own restaurant, the Fontana di Trevi. It was a very fashionable place back then, with the signatures of all kinds of celebrities adorning the walls. And at night he would always give the leftovers to poor Italians round the back of the kitchen.

When I (Sandro, born in 1960) started elementary school, I had to sit in the back row; that was the “Italians’ corner.” We were the outsiders. Until one day the first Turks showed up. From that day on, the Germans let me play with them, and the Turks became the outsiders.

Our father never harbored any resentment toward the Germans. As a southern Italian he experienced just as much discrimination here in northern Italy as he did in Germany. They used to call him a “terrone,” a pejorative term for Italians from the south, and for years our mother had to listen to all kinds of malicious gossip. In fact it was he who introduced really good cuisine to this village, freshly made pasta, proper pizza. We still cook from his recipes today, including the Zuppa Romana that he invented in Munich back then. Whenever guests from Munich read the menu here at the Nerina they got a big surprise, and then they found out that he, Francesco Di Nuzzo, had invented this dessert on Maximilianstraße in the 1950s. On the very spot, by the way, where the Gucci store is today; that’s what friends who visited Munich recently told us. What he never told anyone when he talked about the dessert, however, was that only a few years previously he had nearly died of hunger, overwork, and cold. He spent sixteen years in Munich, from ‘52 to ‘68, but in the entire time he never once went to Neuaubing.

To this day our parents’ room contains only the furniture they bought in Munich in the 1950s, almost like a museum.

My father was a very sociable person. We used to spend our summer holidays on the Riviera every year, that was in the 60s. He often got talking to German tourists; after that he would sometimes hint at what he had experienced. “La vita era difficile” (life was hard) was a kind of mantra. Later on, when he was old, he talked about it more, especially to his granddaughter, probably because she would ask innocent questions. He was drafted into the military on 18 August 1943 and only three weeks later arrested by the Germans in his barracks. When he tried to escape wearing civilian clothing he was caught and sent to Germany in a cattle wagon. First he had to work in Moosburg, apparently to help with the potato harvest. In Neuaubing—no idea what exactly he did there. He must have suffered terribly from the cold and hunger, that came up repeatedly. How they used to search for scraps of food … Later bread was sacred to him and he never left so much as a crumb on his plate. As an old man he was very sensitive to cold, I often think that came from that time. He knew a little German, so he often interpreted between his comrades and the Germans and he therefore had a better relationship with one of the wardens. Or maybe it was a German foreman. Apparently, he took him home with him on several occasions. And he had a daughter. There must have been an attraction between her and my father. Allegedly he even wanted my father to stay in Germany after the war.

Before the war ended the German Kapos used to keep saying, when we have the super weapon we’ll kill all you Italian traitors, and they would make the slitting throat gesture. In April ‘45 he was arrested because of an alleged sabotage operation. On 30 April there was a bombing raid. That was when he ran away and managed to make it as far as Innsbruck on foot. A couple of days later the first Americans arrived.

After that he started working for the railroad police and spoke to a young woman at Milan station who had missed her train. That’s how my parents met.

Twice he applied for compensation, once to the Italian government, once to Germany. But he didn’t receive anything from either of them. He was an extremely positive person, but that affected him deeply.

There’s an Italian saying, “fare le ale alle farfalle”, make wings for butterflies; it is used to refer to people who are very good with their hands. My father could do anything, he even built this house all by himself.

He never told me anything about his time in Germany. It wasn’t until 2017, when a historian came to interview him, that I learned what he had experienced. I sat here by the stove, secretly taking notes. When I started asking him questions about it the next day, he was in a very bad way. He said he was “dead” from the interview and never wanted to talk about it again. Not even with his brother, who must have had very similar experiences, he did not exchange a word about the time in Germany. Of course, he applied for compensation, but he only received standard letters in reply, informing him: unfortunately, there’s nothing for you. He never talked about it himself.

So I only know about things from here. My sister was sometimes sent down to Bolzano on foot with food parcels that his parents had packed for him. By the time the parcels arrived in Germany, if they arrived at all, they were just crumbs. When he arrived back at this village in June ’45, he weighed only 43 kilos. The whole village came out to welcome him–but then he learned that his father was dead. The partisans had laid booby-trapped tree trunks across the roads containing explosives The Germans then forced the Italians from the villages to clear them away. One of them was my grandfather. He was killed when a bomb exploded while he was removing a tree.

My father then worked for years as a carpenter in Cortina d’Ampezzo. He was very fit right until the end. Shortly before he died, he made this church out of thousands of matches and he used to laugh at me when I needed a shopping list to remember what to buy. But then he died very quickly of Covid in fall 2020.

Thank you for taking the trouble to come here from Germany, but unfortunately, I have nothing to tell. I know nothing. My father did not tell us anything. I only have these documents and the family album. Whenever he opened it he would immediately start talking, about his seven siblings, about life in the countryside… He was a very good dancer and very sociable, but his time in Germany, he buried that deep inside him.

What I do know is that he was stationed in Montenegro when he was disarmed and deported by the Germans. And Neuaubing was a place of hunger. Extreme, appalling hunger. There were bombing raids. Once he broke into the cupboard where the bread was kept. German children would spit at them as they walked to work every day. After he was liberated, he made his way over the Brenner pass on foot. On the way he made himself makeshift clothing out of old train curtains. Even his own sister did not recognize him when he arrived back at his parents’ farm. He had to tell her his name, he was that thin. I don’t know any more than that.

Pier Vanni Ganora falls silent. His wife talks about her father who was a brought to a barracks after being disarmed by the Germans. There a table was set and the Germans said: either you fight for Mussolini or you’ll go to Germany. But he managed to escape and joined the partisans. After the war he liked to talk about it, and she retells the story cheerfully, almost with pride.

Well, says Pier Vanni Ganora, that’s a different story. It was easier to talk about that, everyone wanted to hear it. My father never received any compensation, let alone recognition. His first job after the war was fixing rail cars in Turin, just as he had in Neuaubing. He was employed by Fiat his whole life. Ganora begins to cry. All that’s left for me is this pain. Why didn’t I ask him. I’m very sorry that I can’t tell you any more.

A German once said to me that Piedmont is the Prussia of Italy. We come from Pinerolo, beyond Turin. My great-grandfathers fought during the unification of Italy, my grandfather was in the war in Libya, my father was drafted in 1942. On 8 September 1943 his unit was left entirely alone, the officers all fled and the soldiers were deported in cattle wagons from Montenegro to Königsberg. There was no food, many of them died on the way. There he had to unload ships. At some point he was deported to Munich, perhaps because the Russians were advancing on Königsberg. In Neuaubing he repaired rail cars. The Germans were very strict and very well organized. Hunger, cold, and lice, that’s all there was. On Sundays the forced laborers were often hired out to perform some work or other. My father had to escort a girl to the countryside, to the relatives of the one of the camp bosses, because Munich was increasingly being bombed. The farmers gave him something to eat: bread, butter, jam. He saved it to share with his friend in the camp that evening. But when his friend was likewise sent to people in the countryside and was also given something to eat, he ate it all himself. From that day on my father began to mistrust people. And he always warned: be wary with friends!

The cold and hunger in Neuaubing had a lasting effect on him. Here he always used to stuff all the cracks and holes in the winter and he would heat the wood-burning stove until it was glowing hot. He tried to obtain an invalidity pension because he had contracted tuberculosis in Germany. The Italian state wanted clear proof that he had contracted the disease during wartime. The final answer from the authorities came more than thirty years after the first application; by then my father was long since dead. Here in Casale Monferrato he worked for Eternit and he died of lung cancer because of the asbestos, like so many of them did. My mother died of the same thing, in her case, it was the toxic paints. Today there is a memorial park where the factory used to be. I often go there to remember them.

My father often used to say he would like to visit Neuaubing again. I never had time – or at least that’s what I thought. His only comfort was this certificate: “Attestato Volontario della Liberta.” He experienced those key scenes that so many people have recounted. A barracks yard, a table set, anyone who pledged to fight for Mussolini and for the Republic of Salo could eat. Anyone who refused had to board the train for Germany. He refused.

Outside on the little square in front of his bakery the villagers are celebrating an outdoor mass. November 4 is “Giorno dell’Unità Nazionale” and “Giornata delle Forze Armate,” Day of National Unity and Armed Forces Day. Lucio Eicher Clere stands by the oven looking out at the silvery late autumn light with a bewildered look and a smile on his face.

Yes, they really are celebrating the “Victoria,” the “victory” of 1918… If I were a priest I would ban all military symbolism from the church, he says as he kneads the dough and pulls out an old metal form that his father sometimes used to stamp a pattern into his bread. 

My father was given this form by a friend decades ago. The friend had made it himself. Yes, of course, for a German visitor the pattern immediately evokes associations. But you don’t have to be a German for that: it’s a swastika, his friend was a convinced fascist. But my father didn’t really take it seriously.

Lucio Eicher Clere goes into the empty dining area and lays a brochure on the table, a brochure written by him and dictated by his father: “Ricordi della Campagna di Russia.” He sits down, he has baked ravioli for his German guests, served with salad. Then he starts to tell the story: 

In my father’s case everything was a bit different. He fought in the Russian campaign. A total of 200,000 Italians participated, of whom only about 20,000 survived. At first they thought it would be a breeze getting to Moscow. But then they got stuck in the expanses of Ukraine. The hunger and cold must have been really terrible. He wrote down his memories of the campaign six months later; the phrase “inferno di ghiaccio russo” keeps cropping up, the icy Russian hell. When they retreated, he said, the snowy white earth was often black with corpses.

His Italian battalion was ordered to retreat at the end of January ’43, 2,000 kilometers on foot, from Ukraine via Belarus to Poland. From there, the few Italians who were still alive returned home by train. On April 1, ‘43 he stood here before the door of his parents’ bakery. His baking skills probably saved his life in Russia because he knew how to heat an oven and he made bread for the soldiers.

Well, he had to return to the war straight away, and in September he was suddenly a prisoner of war and a “traitor” and he came to the camp at Neuaubing, for twenty-two months. But there some wealthy woman, probably the wife of a Party bigwig, chose him to work as a domestic servant in her house. The son of these Germans was fighting in the war down in southern Italy. Maybe my father reminded her of her son; anyway, thanks to this woman he was well fed and he worked for the family in the garden and in the fields. He was totally privileged, no wonder that he later spoke less about this than about his time in Russia.

After the war he took over the bakery here. He never saw himself as a victim. But here in the village, like everywhere else in Italy, there was this absurd competition about who was the greatest victim, the IMIs counted for nothing. I still remember how a former concentration camp inmate here in the village bawled out a former military internee, screaming: “What do you know? What did you suffer?”

I actually studied theology and psychology, but then I took over the bakery here when my father couldn’t manage any more. My daughter is now working here in the fourth generation of bakers.