Entry into neutral Switzerland
The night walk was long and we felt anxious throughout the night; long the friend of our “contrabbandiere” was not a pleasant person; even I understood then that he kept threatening to abandon us, with our entire luggage in the middle of nowhere, if we did not give him more than the previously agreed sum of money. Another frightening episode happened later when we had to pass under a checkpoint at the top of the Mount Bisbino, where fascists, Germans and dogs were guarding the border areas. We had to crawl on the grass for some time and keep as quiet as possible. Later on, we all stopped in a cowshed for some sleep and to wait for dawn. Soon after, when day light had not quite overcome the dark and moonless night, we came across a horizontal net, with a hole in it, over a drop in level. This was the point in which the two “contrabbandieri” had chosen to drop us and our entire luggage through and to leave us on Swiss soil.
Since we had so many suitcases we kept going backward and forward in a wide, open and hilly countryside feeling lost and abandoned. A soldier in uniform soon saw us from the distance and came towards us. My father, exhausted and depressed from the night ordeal, assumed the soldier was a German one and broke down and started to cry. But the soldier was Swiss and all he wanted was to help us to reach the border check point and suggested we hired a carriage with horses to better end the last leg of our journey.
Eventually we reached the checkpoint at a place called Bruzzella; whilst the beautiful Swiss countryside had been completely deserted of animals or human beings during our recent wanderings, at the steep arrival in Bruzzella we encountered very many refugees like us coming down the slope all loaded with suitcases and belongings, having all probably experienced similar night wanderings, escaping into Switzerland from fascist Italy and from other Nazi occupied countries.
My mother’s quick wit and knowledge of French and German came to use when she succeeded to convince the Swiss border guards to let us into Switzerland, when they had told us that too many people had been entering Switzerland that day and that we should not dismiss our carriage and turn back with it.
She told them that she had Swiss friends from her Swiss schooldays in Genoa, who were expecting us and who would have helped us to settle and that, therefore, we would not have been a burden for Switzerland like most of the other refugees asking asylum. This was not true, but it saved us from having to turn back. They then asked us to deposit all valuables, like jewellery and money, because it would have been safer, since we would soon be sharing our lives with many other unknown refugees. They also said that they would return everything to us when we would go back to Italy.
Read the next part of Olga’s story: ‘First Months in Swiss Refugee Camps’
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