Born in 1906
The interview was recorded in the home of witness, of San Stino Livenza, during a meeting between friends, organized by Joseph Gasparini (San Donà di Piave).
Tape 1986 / 3 - Side A January 19, 1986
and I had lived in Chiarano 11.
We had the first house after the rising. Ahead of us were gone all refugees.
Here was the German headquarters and have been over fifty.
The Germans did not want to see kids at home, because they disturbed and so on.
I I remember there was a boat where we put the crop, and had twenty-eight children in this boat. When the Italians have discovered - because most of the Italians were not - they started to bomb. The first bomb fell on the barco. Fortunately, he beat on the wire above. It exploded in the air and there was not even injured, but we escaped all of us children.
front of the house, the Germans had planted the balls [balloons] and put the copper [branches, twigs] because the Italians do not see.
Shortly before the offensive [on the Piave in June 1918 - battle of the Solstice "] the Germans were eight days with the horses and attacked with Trucking ready. They had to go on the Piave, and went on the Piave and there remained all. Some of those who were with us went back and said 'tuti mama kaputt' . He meant that they had killed everyone.
[During the occupation], we are always left to clear up. We went in search of food, that food there was and I remember that I have swollen legs to go "to charity." We would go to the charity of potatoes, of what he was. [...]
We had 40 head of cattle and we took them all away. They left us only two vacchette. [...]
They arrived in San Martino.
There were pigs in the sty. They killed and burned the hair with straw. The entrails and all that stuff and throw it away there is going to take us up to eat.
The corn on the cob and destroyed them all. Destroyed all the crops.
The cellar was full of wine. "Buttons" twenty-five [hl]: the shot with the rifle and by dint of drinking have been drunk.
On all our cellar was a tank that, if the barrel spread, recovered wine. Got drunk, went into the tank and are dead. Four of them, four Germans, drowned, they were drunk, all dead, drowned.
Poor Carlo bailer, who lived near us - it was he and his wife with three young daughters - the Germans ... the ongaresi [Hungarian], they went there. They lit the fire and put on a calièra de aqua . When I went to kill the pig, Charles jumped out with a pitchfork. You know what they did? They took and planted in the caliera boiling. The pig gliel'hanno left and his wife had seen this "mirror" has been sabotaging [stuttering]. He spoke no more.
Poor Simonella Ernesto, which was my uncle ... we had a little chicken and he had a boat. All that we had put on the poultry barco. The ongaresi , the Germans, vol ndàrghe the screwdriver and gain [andargli want to steal the chickens]. He runs off with the fork and if it runs into our room - which was a hidden room - and does not go under the bed, god c. I copa hip Lii .
[...] We were forty people. There was a muss [ass] and went down low to charity. Three came home with two pumpkins and ... try to eat polenta and sorghum, as I ate ... if you shit more! Poenta and sorghum or pestarèi de zuca Poenta and with a 'outlet na de sorghum .
D. How were these pestarei ?
R. The pumpkin is cleaned and made fire. This was made clear as when you mash the beans and then toss the pasta. We did it well, everything to make it more, because it was in forty, not one, eh! He threw into the flour, sorghum milled with a grinder hand, the red sorghum [sorghum], that from scoati [sink toilet brush] .
We ate one meal a day there, and you could not go to the toilet more. You could rent it!
[...] Once the Germans took all of us and we have closed on a room from another family. Orders if they were waiting to kill us all or make us free. They waited and we were close one day and one night. I, too, everybody. There were women and children. All closed. After a day and a half left us free.
with females [adult women] their "no ifs intrigued" ; with the girls instead. The girls had to stay hidden.
But more than ... was not really the true German was the ongarese el cancaro more gross .
[...]
After wait, cholera broke out.
D. Cholera or English?
R. No, cholera, they were told us. It went into the hospital, in the woods of San Marco.
They had been without food and eating raw corn, dogs, cats.
Eh! You know who have lost the war because they had nothing to eat?
And eating this stuff cholera broke out.
We middle-class, although not eat well, there was no power ... but to them, dear mariavergine , the leper del bosc de Cessalto [actually the witness refers to the former "forest of San Marco" that stood at Santa Maria Country, on the border between light Cessalto and] ... was packed full, it took them all there for the infection of cholera.
D. She has seen the military hospital? As era fatto?
R. Eh, porco diose! Il lazzaretto era formato come un ospedale. Aveva due saloni, uno a destra e uno a sinistra dell'entrata e dopo c'era l'ambulatorio dei dottori.
Dottori là non ne dormivano, andavano una volta al giorno a visitarli.
In testa ai due saloni c'erano i gabinetti. Era come un ospedale, né più né meno.
Domanda di un ascoltatore. C'era qualcuno che si salvava?
R. Ehi! Non ne ho mai visto neanche uno. Morivano, and after they went to bury the cemeteries here and there.
Cholera was ill from eating, eating corn on the cob raw.
know when the cobs are "medium grain"? They ate there with some of those 'sugar, stuff like that, you see that they were not used, the more heat that was ...
of civilians even inside a quell'ospedaletto. All Germans.
We have endured so much hunger, ate sorghum porridge, that yes, but we had at home, he had hidden two cows, ate something.
The Germans knew that we had two cows, but left be. They saw that we were many: he had twenty-seven children, not one. There were seven brides who were pumping! The
were peca [penalty] these children and then have left the two cows.
*
Our house was where she now lives Scolaro, in the woods cao de San Marco .
The Germans cut their Rori [oaks] ... There was a forest of oaks that you do not even have an idea. There were oak trees that it took two men to embrace them. Big! Look, with a shotgun you could not to hit a bird that was on an oak, from the top it was.
my poor father was a woodcutter, worked in the woods [...] there were sawmills. All the bridges that were on Bidoggia were made with those oaks. The forest was common.
German soldiers destroyed the forest. They cut out for them, they used there, and the remainder have taken away to the fortress.
[...] They took away all the soldiers of the first war, and cut away everything. I tell you we were the first after the home front, we were facing the woods.
*
The Germans, you know who came up to Meolo? The Piave had passed [the offensive in June 1918].
The Italians have left to spend the Piave and when I went over - who arrived with a gun, without reservation, with little ammunition - have "raised" the waters of the Piave and their back are no longer able to return.
before, [when they had passed, the Piave] was dry. They crossed with horses and so on. Then, when the Italians lever [scroll left] the water of the Piave ... the horses were inside, the military could no longer move and have to clear the water had to give him shots. Among horses, carts and soldiers had stopped the water. They had to bombard the knot that had formed in the Piave, to break and allow the flow of water that went into the sea.
Belt 1986 / 9 - Side A
Additions and clarifications, January 30, 1986
[...]
We had twenty-seven-twenty-eight boys and had all day in the woods during the war of '15-'18. Were still a lot of ammunition and all of us kids, you know what you did? It took, taken down a few bombs, crates, dust ... it used to be line powder of two hundred meters he was going to end up on ammunition depots. He gave fire to the powder and run away. The powder was blazing away, was in the ammunition depots and bursting out everything. That was the opinion that one was!
not sold these remnants, ammunition, rifles, cannons. We are the ammunition did the jump. The other stuff came after the soldiers to take it.
[The story of the war will be interrupted by various episodes of life in the ancient forest of San Marco]
[...] After the war - that the forest was gone destroyed - scarcity of wood. If someone needed wood ... went to these woods with a shovel and a manera in two hours and you threw out three or four tons of firewood. All stem [chips, sticks]. They had the right ones and cleavers were people who knew the grain of the wood.
After the war, the wood was pulled to put agriculture and the concentrations of refugee shacks, stuff like that.
There have been a thousand people inside, a five to six hundred families. In places where there is [...] Country Bidoggia on the bridge [on the Calnova], right side is a road that goes inside. Go on a mile and see the military hospital where there were soldiers with cholera. Our house was out of the woods and now there is a family that they too are rented through the hospital. We lived there until 1934.
The forest with the war, all gone. The Germans took away all cut with axes. There was the department lumberjacks and loggers also our country's going to help them. had requisitioned all.
I boscariòi were a regiment of their own ... but to cut the wood, they cut all the Italians mobilized stuff of war.
They were trenches and bridges. Bidoggia there on, there was a bridge every two hundred meters. He was to go to war on the Piave [because the bridges that were not enough already were] a Campodipietra, and after another on Calnova - from Calnova - another was Grassaga. Thus, the bridges between them [the stone], with the oaks have other bridges.
The forest must have been a total of about 350 courts and over time of 15 and 18 has been cut everything.
Before, when there were the Italians cut the oak forest that were marked by trenches and made with oak. Italians cut by the rules, when the war began.
[...]
The Germans have made a clean sweep of the woods. They had been four oaks, right there "above" the road to Family M. They were very decent people, had made friends with the Germans left and 4:00 to 5:00 oaks.
D. Why this family?
R. or spies for the Germans, or whatever. Them to him and they left after them if they are cut and if they are taken away. Now the forest was destroyed, there was nothing.
When they left the Germans did not There was nothing in place of wood. Nothing, nothing. Net. A little of ramada [pruning] and sochi [stumps].
In the spring they started to give three fields in one, four to each other. They were going to extricate these firewood and Soche and pulled to agriculture.
[...]
The municipality has given the wood for free to families. A field-two each, and in a year: cleaned up, there was not even a wand.
Inside the forest, without exaggeration, there have been a media di mille persone al giorno, ognuna sul suo pezzo di terra.
A noi hanno dato due campi. Mio padre è venuto fuori dalla famiglia patriarcale ed è andato ad abitare nel bosco in una baracca americana. Si abitava nella baracca e si andava a ripulire il nostro pezzo di bosco per mettere un poco di mais.
A quelli che andavano ad abitare nel bosco con la baracca gli assegnavano un pezzo di terra. Il resto del bosco l'hanno dato a chi se lo voleva prendere, operai...
A quel tempo là lavori non ce n'erano ... e carestia di legna. Andavano nel bosco, pulivano il loro pezzetto di terra e piantavano mais, patate, fagioli e robe così.
1986 / 9 - Side B
[...] The slum dwellers have been there for a long time.
We have done ten years and have come away in '33. We were orphans, because my dad died of '20.
The cabins in the forest must be left for another twenty years, until he came out of the law that said all those who were in the barracks had to go to the homes and made the houses, those houses along the road once there were.
There must have been 6-700 cabins.
called The Matausen [Mauthausen] because he was a concentration of poor people [See Julie Boa, Far West trevisan , 1987. Life in the barracks to "kennel" in Treviso, always after 1GM].
When some of us went out of the barracks, perhaps in the country, they said 'you're on Matausen, shut up. " Matausen means misery.
[...]
Our cabin was American. [...] It was called the American ones because they used the barracks when the Americans came to fight in Italy drinking beer.
Then they retreated and left us tutte le baracche che le hanno date ai poveri.
Io ho ancora il tetto della baracca, sul barco. Quando abbiamo disfatto la baracca, il tetto l'abbiamo messo sul barco, ed è ancora là [dove Simonella abita ora, nella bonifica delle Sette Sorelle, a San Stino di Livenza]. È ancora sano...
Quando siamo venuti via, i nostri due campi li abbiamo lasciati al comune perché si pagava l'affitto. Abbiamo disfatto la baracca e l'abbiamo portata qua nella palude dove l'abbiamo usata finché si è guastata "torno torno" [alla base] e non stava più in piedi. Allora abbiamo fatto su una casetta e l'abbiamo coperta con il tetto della baracca. Siamo andati Twenty years later and after we bought where we are now (still in the area).
We tore down the house there, built this house here and the roof of the house - which was the cabin - is on the barco . How old is he, that roof? [...]
Back to talking about life in the former forest of San Marco
[...] More donkeys were not there at that concentration. There was a wide road, to go out, which was fine when it has been three feet of mud. There was a well to which all families served, less evil that he did not cheer. We were without water and the municipality has made us in the center of a well. Everyone, when he needed water, went well with Mastella and the rope and pulled up the water, then carried off the rope and Mastella.
think: a hundred tubs, tubs with a thousand that go down into the well, good water that could have been there?
not cheer erupted because Jesus Christ said that if I send him all the cheering died.
[...]
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