Read the Previous Part of Olga’s story here: Entry into neutral Switzerland
After a thorough delousing session in an infirmary (this was caused by our sleeping in the cowshed the previous night) and being given a Refugee (Fluechtling) identity card, which contained the word “deloused”….., we started our 5 months period spent in specially prepared camps for refugees. The first one was in Chiasso, the next one was a large mountain hut in Rovio, above Lake Lugano and then an old fashioned Grand Hotel, the Majestic, in Lugano itself in a beautiful setting above the centre, with a lovely view of the lake. During these first months men were separated from women and put up in different places. The food there was not scarce like in Carate , but it was so different from our Italian diet, that I remember being forced fed with something called “gries”, a sort of millet soup….
Sometimes we were taken out for walks in the streets of Lugano in a convoy, guarded by a few soldiers by our sides. During one of these walks, my mother started talking in German to one of the Swiss guards patrolling us. She must have told him that she was wondering where I was going to be sent, whether to a Kinderheim (Boarding School) or to some Swiss family the Red Cross would have found for me, since grownups were going to be sent to working camps, where children were not allowed. The soldier told her about his family and how they had sometimes fostered children for some periods and, depending on discussing the matter with his wife, he was prepared to take me on in his house in a village near Zurich. This must have been a great relief for my parents and it was left that, when children could no more stay with their parents, they would come to fetch me.
Life in Lugano continued tranquil and safe, but it soon came to an abrupt end when we were moved to German Switzerland, to a little village, Ringlikon, into a sort of temporary camp made of wooden huts. It was winter and the whole camp was covered in snow; there were no toilets and I remember having to go out in the snow at night. It was cold, the food was terrible and we slept on straw mattresses; what a change from Lugano.
The next place we were transferred to was Girembad, still in German Switzerland and still cold and wintery. Sometime in the evenings some talented refugees improvised some entertainments for their fellow refugees and I remember some lovely songs from operettas by Franz Lehar or similar German/Austrian songs being sung by charming young singers, often nostalgic of their distant war torn countries. Soon, though, an epidemic of scarlet fever took over the camp and, by the time I caught it, the infirmary was full, so that an Italian boy, slightly younger than me, and I were taken to a nearby Hospital in Wald, where we spent 4 weeks, for the very first time both of us away from our parents. I still have the letters I wrote to them telling them about life and language in a Swiss hospital. The little boy and I shared a room and, I think, a young man also shared our room. We played and commented all that was happening to us, without ever being too unhappy from having had to part from our parents. Once I had a telepathic premonition there that my mother was coming to visit me. I ran to the window of the hospital room and there I saw her arriving.
The first refugee camps were manned by Swiss personnel; there was a Head of the camp and some helpers. All refugees, not just Italians, but some coming from all European Nazi occupied countries, had to stay in these camps for the first 5 months. After this period, those who had the means to live (but not work) as free citizens in Switzerland, left and went to carry on their lives in exile as best as they could. The majority, though, with my parents included, could not afford this standard of life for an unknown period of war years, and were sent to work camps. These had a Swiss Head; the rest of the personnel running the camp were the refugees themselves, who, in exchange for their work, received a nominal amount of pocket money. My mother sometimes served meals at the table or worked in the laundry, my father, with other men, made new paths in woods by cutting down trees.
About the time I left hospital and was collected in a taxi by my new foster mother, my parents were moved to the small mountain village of Randa, not far from Zermatt in Canton Valais. There they spent more than a year working in a big old fashioned hotel full of refugees like them, all speaking different languages and with different habits, but all attending to their different camp duties.
Meanwhile in Italy there were close relatives left behind, my mother ‘s older sister Clara, with her husband, Vito, son, Ermanno, Vito’s aunt, Ester and uncle Beniamino, they all understood the danger that Jews remaining in Italy were incurring and contacted the same “contrabbandieri” as we did and followed in our footsteps to Switzerland. After having spent the first five months in different camps from us, the grownups were sent to St Niklaus in Canton Valais, not too far from Randa, so that the two sisters and families often met half way, exchanging comments and enjoying the unexpected chance to be near one another in those troubled and insecure years.
My grandparents from Genoa, with my Aunt Renata, also followed us into Switzerland, but had the misfortune of having been sent back on their first attempt, but, luckily, made it on their second one. Again, their Swiss itinerary was slightly different from ours, but, as the story goes, whilst passing through Lugano on a train, they spotted me, in my pink coat, walking in a convoy through the streets of Lugano. This unexpected and very welcome sight enabled them to get in touch with the rest of the family, so that my grandparents, stationed in camps in French Switzerland, succeeded in meeting up with their daughters from time to time.
Read the next part of Olga’s story: “Life in Weiningen: 1944 – 1946“
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