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My father's story - part two
It was his birthday, on november 19th when he decided to leave Venice. The German soldiers had occupated the North of Italy and it was very dangerous for young Jews like him to stay in town. He prepared his backpack, his documents and took some money for paying the smugglers. It was very difficult to across the bonderies between Italy and Switzerland; it was necessary to know somebody who could accompany him to the frontier and help to across it. It was night when he arrived at the frontier; he asked to pass but a Swiss soldier told him that the frontier was closed. “You must go back to Italy” he said. “It is impossible” he answered to the soldier. “ If I go back German soldiers can stop and send me to the Concentration Camps”. Rather than go back I prefer to die here. Give me your gun so I can shoot myself”. The soldier asked to his commander what he had to do and the commander answered: “Okay; he can pass”. My father spent one year and half in Switzerland. He was young and strong and he spent this period working in some labour camps. But his passion was the swimming and he decided to look for a swimming team where would possible to make his workouts. One day he went to Lugano where he had the fortune to meet the son of the President of a Swimming Club. So he began to teach swimming and make his work outs. He was living in the camp of Mezzovico, no far from Lugano, when happened an attempt to a German train. One day a train of German soldiers passed near the camp and some soldiers opened the windows and made the Nazi salute. The workers in the camp began to throw stones to the soldiers. This was a dangerous event for the neutrality of the Switzerland. For this fact he and other workers of the labour camp were sent to a punition camp.
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The story of my father
One day I found on the desktop of my computer a folder that I had never opened. I remember that my sister sent it to me many months before but I didn't give much importance to this fact. I decided to open the folder and I found inside many files about the period that my father spent in Switzerland during the Second World War. So I decided to translate these documents and begin to reconstruct the history of part of my father’s life.
My father dead in 1987, exactly one year before the birth of my son. I never asked my father something about the period of the war : where he escaped, who helped him, when he left Venice, and so on. I began to ask my mother, and she told me what she remembered. But this was not enough for me. I decided to look for and rebuilt the history of the life of my father. I knew that during his youth he was a very good swimmer; he began to swim when he was fourteen and won many competitions and races. In 1941, he met his love: my mother. It happened during the summer on the beach near Venice. My mother was used to go to the beach with her sister and other friends. The sisters were twice and at the beginning my father had difficulty to distinguish one from the other. But after some days he decided that he was fallen in love with my mother. The war was growing and my father was a young strong boy, but he was Jewish and the new rules against the Jews forbade to live in a normal way. In 1943 he was compelled to hide himself in the mountains where lived with a farmer. At the morning he went outside with the cows and in the evening his work was to milk them. But one morning arrived the Nazi soldiers and he decided to go back to Venice; it was too dangerous for him and for the farmer to stay there.
When he arrived in Venice was hidden in the house of the parents of my mother for a pair of months. But one day, on the door of the house they found a piece of paper with written: “In this house is hidden a jew”. It was time to escape once again. It was no safe to stay hidden in mountain, nor in Venice. He decided to try to go to Switzerland.
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