During World War II, hundreds of children were born to Italian women and African-American soldiers in Italy. Many were abandoned, and many have died. However, the survivors still seek their roots today.
Written by Francesco Bertolucci
“Many have come. The last one told me she didn’t know who her father was and wanted to find him: when she was born, her mother already had three children, her husband was at war and when he came back, he found her. And I told her she ought to be happy. Her mother kept her after all. As I told another girl who didn’t understand why her mother always went from Imperia to Versilia. She was simply following the troops. Italians don’t know it, but they have relatives of colour. And I have seen the slaughter of the innocents”.
Silvana Galli (who passed away recently) was 16 years old when the American troops arrived in Versilia, a war zone back in the day, a well-known tourist area now, and got pregnant. The father was Samuel Washington, a nineteen-year-old soldier of the 92nd Buffalo division from Alabama.
The front stopped here between 1943 and 1945 because of the Gothic Line, a defensive structure from Cinquale to Pesaro, protected by the Nazifascists, that divided Italy in two.
The battlefields were far away and the allied troops quartered between Versilia and Livorno. The Tyrrhenian side was under U.S. command and the Adriatic under British. The occupation of these areas led to love stories, black markets, rapes, and prostitution. And many children who don’t know who their fathers are.
KILLED OR ABANDONED CHILDREN.
After the war, thousands of children were abandoned and left in orphanages—especially babies born from the union of a white Italian woman and a man of color.
The exact number can’t be established in any way. “There was the Gothic Line here, so there was a massive amount of women, huge – Silvana Galli explains – Many Italians don’t know they have relatives of color. Their grandmothers left their newborns in the orphanage because it was considered a disgrace.
I was in the orphanage of Lucca for five months and saw all the bustle. All grown women, coming and going, none were teenagers like me; The famous ‘segnorine.’ They would come from Naples, La Spezia, Milan, everywhere. They gave birth in hospitals; they came here to leave their newborns.
I remember one woman from Naples who brought her baby saying that her other son had tracked her down and that she couldn’t be seen with a black baby. These women followed the troops, got pregnant, and didn’t know what to do with the newborns afterward.
Many of them died. When the war was over, it became apparent that women gave birth or aborted on their own: fetuses were found in shoeboxes or buried along the rivers. My dad found one in the attic of the house he was renovating.
Three died within a week in the orphanage because the nuns could only give them condensed milk: the newborns got gastroenteritis and did not survive. That was the only thing the nuns had. When the babies were 6-7 months old, they changed them only in the morning and evening. Whenever I would pass by and see that one of them had dropped a bottle, I’d put it back. It was like watching them die slowly. In the meantime, their mothers were gone, chasing behind the troops”.
Silvana was 16 years old, the daughter of a wealthy family, and she was sent to the orphanage by her father, who thought she was too young to raise a child. She was supposed to leave the baby there. But she fought against everything and everyone and succeeded in keeping it.
“Giorgio was born in 1946, Silvana says. When Samuel left, I was 2 weeks pregnant. Had it been a girl, her name would have been Ruth, after his mother,” she recalls. They fell in love slowly; he was stationed in a camp near her home. After an initial “Hello blonde!” they got to know each other, speaking a little English, French, and Italian.
After he left, she never heard from him again, also because she never received the letters he sent to her home during the five months she was in the orphanage. Samuel tried to marry her before leaving her pregnant. Silvana says, “he brought me to Governor Gordon West, who was here in Viareggio at Villa Bertolli and wanted to marry me, she remembers.
Once we were out though, the governor called me back and spoke with me alone: Miss, do you know how these people are treated in the USA? He said, if you go to Alabama, they will kill you right away! There is the Ku Klux Klan, and if they see a white woman with a black… We didn’t know anything about these things. Who knew those stories?”
HUNGER AND SEGNORINE.
“The segnorine, the famous “ladies” – explains Adolfo Lippi, a retired journalist present because his father had been deported to Buchenwald – where Italian women would engage the Americans, hoping they would marry them or were prostitutes.
The Americans arrived with trucks and jeeps from Livorno, loaded the young ladies, and took them to Tombolo, today Camp Darby. There was a big black market with gangsters and ‘segnorine’ from all over Italy”.
“They would come on Mondays – Giancarlo Garbocci, a barber, remembers – they would load them up and bring them back around one o’clock in the morning. It was difficult times. There was misery, people were begging friars and soldiers for food everywhere. And when we would get back home, every night we would hear a knock on the neighbouring doors “Miss, miss!” and if they opened, anything could happen. Even very bad things.
The occupying troops always brought collateral damages”. Many women ended up badly. “Many young ladies died, buried anonymously in the Tombolo estate – continues Lippi – Some were girls from important families, not only from the lower class. Several were graduates. I was young at the time, 5 years old.
LOOKING FOR THE FATHER.
Isabella bears her father’s surname, Saxon, but she never got to know him. All she has is his name, Isadore, and the story of how he and his mother met. “I met him in Lido di Camaiore, where I lived – remembers Giovanna Carosini, Isabella’s mother – because I went to ask for food at the camp where he was stationed. We chatted and became friends. Then we fell in love. He was 32 years old and from Detroit. When Isabella was born, he was still here.
He was with me when I gave birth and he gave her his last name”. Then, the vicissitudes of war took Saxon far away. And no one has heard from him since. Maybe the contact was interrupted because of a wrong transcription or a lost letter. For her, as for many other women and especially for many sons and daughters looking for fathers, there is only darkness. Not even the U.S. consulate can help them.
There is no way of getting to know their roots. “In the last letter he sent me he told me they were sending him to Germany and that by the end of the war, he would come back for the child,” Giovanna says, “but I haven’t heard from him ever since… nothing. Is it possible that… there is nothing to be found?”.
Francesco Bertolucci is a freelance Italian journalist.
From 2001 to 2011, he has been member of the editorial staff in the Italian daily La Nazione as editor for crime news, news stories, political and sport news.
