大象传媒

I was born in Italy just before it entered the War. My parents had to work very hard so put me into a kindergarten run by nuns. We were bombed several times, and one day the nuns told us that we were going to play a little game of hiding under the benches and keeping very quiet. We did this not really knowing what was going on but it was because the Germans were coming and would take all the children away to punish the population. My father was a partisan and my mother was Jewish. I peeped out from my hiding place and saw armed German soldiers talking to the nuns. The nuns told them that the children had already gone and the Germans didn鈥檛 believe that a nun would lie and took her word for it!

My parents were champion ballroom dancers and every Saturday went to a dance at the local hall. One day they went along, and took me, and found lots of German soldiers there playing German music. They asked my parents to make me go into the middle of the dance floor and salute the Fuhrer which I did, and I repeated my party piece every Saturday thereafter much to the amusement of the Germans. I thought it was a bit of fun and being a young child did not understand the significance of my actions.

In 1945 the US and GB troops liberated my town and then the dance hall was full of Allied soldiers playing Glenn Miller. As usual I went into the dance floor to do my party piece but these soldiers didn鈥檛 think it was funny this time and told me to stop and not to do it again!

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