Content note: This article reflects on personal experiences of war. If you have been impacted by war and would like free, confidential support over the phone, you can call the Witness to War and Violence hotline on 1800 845 198.

Meet Antonietta

Wearing a beautiful silk scarf, and serving up fresh espresso and biscuits, Antonietta could be one of many much-loved Italian grandmothers of Melbourne.

Yet she has lived a life unimagined by many.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Antonietta, who is a member of Spectrum’s Italian Social Support Group for seniors. She was chatting and laughing with her many friends in the group, alongside Spectrum facilitators Luisa, Andrea, George, Fran and Susann.

But today, we are sitting quietly in her pretty kitchen, reflecting on the years past.

In the beginning

Antonietta attributes much of her life to luck. Perhaps it has been.

But it becomes clear that Antonietta has lived with immense courage from the time she was just a little girl.

As Antonietta shows me another old photograph, of four small boys with uncarefully shaved heads, her story begins.

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Antonietta was born in Vicenza, Italy, in 1932.

 “It was a little, little town,” she explains. “Maybe five hundred people. And my family were poor…very poor.”

She was the youngest of five children. It was this kind of family that came under orders of Fascist leader Benito Mussolini in 1938.

[Some years earlier, Mussolini’s Fascist regime had brutally colonised Libya in North Africa, violently displacing Libyans and causing untold suffering. Mussolini ruled through mass propaganda and violence, both against neighbouring countries and his own people.]

One of Mussolini’s initiatives was to relocate poorer Italian workers and their children to Libya’s occupied capital Tripoli, to work the arid land.

For struggling families, this was represented as an opportunity for secure work and basic housing – even if it meant leaving behind Italy itself.

“When we lived in the mountains in Italy, everything was green,” says Antonietta. “We came to Tripoli, and everything was sand. As far as you could see. Sand dunes. Nothing would grow.”

“But around our house,” she remembers, “were the mimosa flowers. We would give them to our mother for Mothers Day.”.

Life in Tripoli

In Tripoli, her family continued to work and struggle. Unsuccessfully, they tried wheat and potatoes. Eventually, they harvested peanuts to sell.

Antonietta is quiet for a moment, remembering these early days.

Eventually, she speaks.

“It was really, really, really hard.”

But things were about to change again for Antonietta’s family.

A family separated

Mussolini had recently signed a pact with Nazi Germany, and mandatory conscription meant that both of Antonietta’s oldest brothers, still in their teens, were called to war.

Not long after, the regime began gathering working-class children, taking them from their families and moving them to education camps called colonia.

“Mussolini said, I want all the children from four to 14. They will be taken care, sent back to Italy, and put in camps, colleges,” says Antonietta.

These colonia, ostensibly to promote the health of poorer children, were also designed to indoctrinate them with Fascist ideologies from a young age.

Antonietta and some of her brothers were taken away, far from her parents to a camp near the French border.

Antonietta was eight years old.

It would be seven long years before she returned to her family.

Children in war

Over the next few years, Antonietta and her siblings were shuffled from camp to camp as WWII continued. She lists each town, each strange and new place. Antonietta was bright and interested in her schooling. She and her friends kept studying when the opportunity arose, despite unimaginable hardship.

One afternoon Antonietta and some other children decided to flee, and ran away from their camp in San Remo.

“We had luck”, she reflects now.

That night, the camp was bombed.

The long journey home

After five long years since little Antonietta was taken from her family, and countless ‘children’s camps’, the war ended.

Yet, the 13,000 children displaced by Mussolini’s regime were left in uncertainty about their families and future.

During this time, one of Antonietta’s brothers was missing. “Back in Tripoli, my mama was writing, writing – what has happened to this boy? I don’t know if he is alive. My other brother went looking for him. But he came back alone.”

Two of Antonietta’s brothers had been taken as prisoners of war. Luckily, both survived.

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The journey back to being reunited with her family took another two years. 

In the months after the war, Antonietta had to hitchhike, hide in the back of a truck to cross through a checkpoint, and travel on a crowded military train returning from Germany. There were of course, no private facilities for a young girl surrounded by hundreds of soldiers.

Only Antonietta’s determination to make it to Rome bore her through the physical pain and discomfort.

Despite this, she remembers little moments of kindness.

“My brother and I arrived at night [to Roma]. We did not have any money to catch this tram, or that tram. Then a man came with his little truck, and he took us there.”

Once in Rome, Antonietta was sent to an orphanage in Assisi. She worked cleaning toilets in the promise of being awarded a more rewarding task. As she recalls being reunited with some of her friends at the orphanage, Antonietta smiles.

Later, news came: A ship was coming to take the children back to their families in Tripoli.

The hope of home

Sadly, it was not yet to be. The ship came – and left.

Antonietta had not made it aboard in time.

She had no choice but to wait for another twelve months.

But after another long year of waiting, she sailed at last on a ship bound for Libya.

Antonietta was finally reunited with her parents in Tripoli. It was 1947.

The little girl who used to bring her mother mimosa flowers, was now a 15-year-old who had lived through a war.

Life, love – and what happened next

As we sit in her peaceful kitchen, I see pictures of Antonietta’s late husband and a hand-drawn portrait of their wedding day on her wall. One photo shows him as a child, unsmiling in military training garb, and shoes that are too big for his young feet. He, too, had spent his childhood in Mussolini’s camps.

Connected by this deep bond and memories of their childhood, they had remained together for life. “Our fortunes,” she explains, “are always the same.”

But life in Italy still held bad memories. Antonietta and her husband moved with their children to Melbourne in 1967.

Since then, she has lived in Melbourne’s northern suburbs.

Despite suffering the loss of her siblings and her father much earlier in life, Antonietta’s own family has grown over half a century.

She speaks proudly of her children, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, and their children.  There are photos of one of the newest arrivals: a happy baby girl with the same sweet smile as Antonietta herself. Right now, she’s busy knitting a pink baby vest with neat, delicate stitches.

A woman of the world

Antonietta has cultivated a life that is vibrant and loving, and she still maintains a great interest and open-mindedness in the world. After attending school in her seventies to improve her English, Antonietta published a travel journal of her time in Brunei.

In it, her writing is lyrical and thoughtful as she embraced new cultures and reflected on wealth inequalities.

“I used to look after my daughter’s children, and then after that I find myself with nothing to do. So I said, I’ll go to school. So I studied for five years.”

She’s continued to travel and learn about different parts of the world.

I’m touched when she asks where I’m from and immediately recognises a famous film from my culture: the Maori film Whale Rider. Antonietta relates to the main character – a young girl who has to leave her home and family and prove herself through hardship.

Moments of joy

During Covid, her friend Lena introduced her to Spectrum’s Social Support Group for Italian seniors, and for several years now Antonietta has joined us every Friday. This week, the group celebrated Christmas in July, with tables of tinsel, singing, and gifts from facilitator Luisa.

You’d think that the hours we spend in Antonietta’s kitchen, recalling the past, would feel heavy. But she laughs often, smiles frequently, and we giggle about watching silly soap operas.

Walking home

Meeting Antonietta, I planned to ask her the secret to a long life. But looking back, it seems that to Antonietta, much was just a matter of luck or fortune.

Maybe what is more urgent to consider, is the impact on children living through war and occupation. Both during the recent past, and those right now.

It’s impossible to speak to the kind and generous lady in front of me, or to look at the old photographs of Antonietta and other children, without thinking that they deserved a childhood of safety instead of war, displacement, and praying for a little luck to make the difference.

It is striking what she has not forgotten, nearly a century later: Who showed kindness when the world did not.

I was honoured to hear Antonietta’s story and share just some of it, here.
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Antonietta is on her way to an appointment with facilitator Luisa.

But afterwards, she’ll walk herself home – as she has been doing for more than ninety courageous years.

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Kelsey Dattoli, Marketing and Communications Lead

With many thanks to Luisa Failla, Spectrum Italian Group Facilitator, who generously played an important part in translating and supporting the development of this story.

Spectrum Migrant Resource Centre