Villa Emma – First Days

From Yoshko’s Memoirs:

Tense and full of expectation our legs led us to the place where a new chapter in our lives would open. We advanced slowly and our friend the man from Modena marched at the head.

Crowds of Italians, residents of the place, their attention was turned toward us. From now on we will live among them. Nonantola is a fairly large village and evident in it are signs of economic development. An extension of the railway line to Ferrara leads to a canning factory that processes in significant volumes the agricultural products of the fertile area: tomatoes, deciduous fruits and grapes. Two-wheeled carts of the farmers of the surroundings crowd at the opening of the factory. These come and these go. The founder and owner of the factory.

Our faithful dog stopped before the house. He searches for the trees of Lesno Brdo. Villa Emma is a rectangular building of broad dimensions. Property of a rich Italian Jew. A summer villa bearing the name of his wife. Broad and elegant stairs divide the house into two long wings. At the entrance a door of dimensions, all glass. Imitations of Greek columns, decorations in Baroque style and ornamentation from the Renaissance period decorate the house from the outside. Everything here is bright and airy, built in straight lines.

Above the entrance – a broad balcony decorated also with handsome decorations.

Between the two wings stretching backward extends a paved inner courtyard in whose center is a flower bed.

At the end of each wing a small tower with an iron gate. Filth. The place was not prepared for residence. They did not know of our coming.

“Patience… do not howl before you have done something yourselves…”

Already some days passed and in the air hangs bitterness. What is the benefit in the beautiful house if you are forced to lie on a bed of straw?

We arrived here destitute and our appearance on the Slovenian border still apparently constitutes a stone of contention between the Germans and the Italians, after our souls were to us for spoil (we escaped with our lives).

They crowded us in two halls, in one the boys and in the second the girls. Luck that it was summer, for the floor of stones was cold and blankets there were not.

A month of days lasted these lives and their daily order fixed: rising, removal of the straw from the hall and from the corridor, washing near the gate and eating in the nearby inn.

There are times and they hold a conversation on the matters of the day and afterward go out for trips over the village. And so, day pursues day.

We feared deterioration. Our entire enterprise was given in danger. The fixed frameworks of life calculated to crumble.

And the people of the village – these looked at us in wonder from morning until evening.

Ties of friendship began to be created between our older boys and between the youths of the village who belonged to the Fascist youth organization “Balilla”. It was impossible to refuse the gifts they brought. We were privileged also to become acquainted with the lawyer Commendatore Friedman, founder of the factory in our vicinity, head of the community of Jews of Modena and in time a soul friend of our Villa Emma. A noble man he was.

Only in the evenings, when we were sitting together on the stairs of the villa and bursting into song, would return to us our feeling of belonging to the society that we built with great toil.

The group longed for a bit of freedom while our Jewish friends warned us again and again: not to wander in the streets, not to stand out, because danger in the matter.