Thread by @t_tonii

I've just found in the Net some pictures of a place I've heard about, but actually never seen: the WW1 POW camp near #Nymbruk, Bohemia. I did not even know its name. This is a family story. A thread /1

In 1914 the Austro-Hungarian empire started WW1, Italy was still a neutral country. The Italian/Venetian speaking people from #Trento province (then Tyrol), where draft and sent to fight zarist Russia. This picture is the 1st train leaving Trento to the front line /2

possibly my great grandfather, then austro-hungarian subject was in that train, who knows? /3

In 1915 #Mussolini (formerly socialist, well paid by French secret service) and the bloodthirsty decadent poet D'Annunzio started a proto-fascist campaign to push Italy into war against the KK Empire (#Musil's "#Cacania"). The parliament, mostly against, was overruled by /4

the Savoia king and violent mobs, menacing deputies' lives. So in May 1915 Italy started a war in order to conquer Trento and #Trieste, the main harbour of KK empire, then a german-slavic-italian city on the Adriatic sea. The Austrohungarian population living in the borders /5

was evacuate by force. In Trento province 173.026 lost their houses and goods. My family householder (my great grandfather) was already in the russian front, leaving an old mother, a wife and 8 children, mostly female. My grandmother was the older, still underage /6

they had 24 hours to pack their small luggages, then they were loaded on a freight wagon going somewhere. They spent long time travelling until they were left in #Nimburg/#Nymburk (now in Czech Rep) where some wooden barraks were arranged on the South bank of the Elbe river /7

I visited #Nymburk, when it was still inside Warsaw Pact, but apparently there nobody had memories of italian-speaking Great War refugees. The precise location of refugees camp remain unknow to me /8

In the meantime a peasant in Veneto region was draft and sent to Karst Plateau borderline to fight "the Austrians". The first offensive battles were bloody and futile, due to the notorious idiocy of italian HQ officers. In 1915 were fought 4 "Isonzo river battles" with heavy/9

casualties on both sides. Some IT regiments lost 50% of soldiers. During a KK counter-offensive an Italian battalion retreat some 100s meter, without being order to. They were decimated without trial. Carabinieri count 1 out of 10 and shoot him on the spot. That peasant /10

was lucky, he was number 8. At a following night-counter-offensive they did not retreat. They were completely wiped out in their trenches. Except him, who hide himself under the corpse of a friend, where he stood for the whole night. In the time before the war /11

he was an emigrant in the #Ruhr region, employed as smokestack-cleaner, and in #Hamburg (he also said he worked as construction worker for "a theatre"): he could speak some German. So in the morning he rise his hands and came out the trench yelling in german he surrended /12

So he ended up in 1915 in a POW camp, "near Nymburk". Today I discover that place. It's #Milovice, formerly called "Starý Benátky" (oh irony: it means "Old Venice"!). In 1916 there were 46.000 POWs in barraks of 300 each. I found this infos here smbr.it/milovice-il-ca… /13

POWs were mostly Italians and Russians. Barraks were built on brick foundation, in wood, by Russian POWs and Czech peasants (in pic below). In the internment camp death toll was from 3-5 to 30 POWs a day. Famine and epidemics were endemic /14

In the meantime my family was in a refugee camp, at cold and hungry. Their shoes lost, since in the train were literally boiled by force with all their clothes, to prevent lethal ticks; they suffered the shame of being undress in public /15

They were not among the very few "irredentisti": they did not ask to be under Savoia Kingdom, they weren't either Habsburg loyalists. But now they felt betrayed by what was their multiethnic country. Treated as second class citizens /16

Very soon the handful of golden ducats they got run out for food. Refugees barraks were cold and overcrowded. The children had to work for food. My auntie Clelia became a bricklayer. Another aunt start giving violin lesson to a German noble family nearby. Obviously /17

she had never played violin before. But she was "Italian" there: that was enough. Europe was crowded by Italian buskers. And when you're hungry probably you are so desperate to make-believe whatever to anyone /18

Grass and rats became part of their diet. War effort was draining all the resouces to the front-line. Famine was getting worst. Pic: POWs in #Milovice /19

From time to time they got some postcards from their father, written on birch-barck from #Leopoli (I read them when I was a child, sadly now are lost. In pic a sample from the Net) a city also known as /20

#Lemberg or #Lwów or #לעמבערג or #Львів, I mean, somewhere far away and never heard before. He was writing he was alive, asking about their health, praying to see them again, in the future. Wishing to be all alive, after all. (Pic: Lemberg front) /21

In the last year of the war he was hit on the head by a shrapnel. He got an infection. Hospitalized in #Brest-Litovsk during peace talks there, when #Trotsky was in town. He died in 1919 without seeing them again. His grave could be somewhere in #Belarus now /22

My grandmother, Mina, began dating with that POW at the Milovice camp. She was 18 y. old by then. They spoke the same Venetian dialect (well, almost), her German was very good: she had studied at a female high-school in #Klausen/#Chiusa at #Säben Abbey under /23

the Beuronese Congregation of nuns, a kind of #Benedictine, but Mina description of her teachers' veil makes me think some were Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, with that typical "cornette". Rules were strict. She excelled in calligraphy both #Kurrent+#Fraktur /24

So her fiancé, Aurelio, managed to leave the internment camp from time to time, in winter he was walking over the frozen Elbe with loads of firewood to keep Mina's family warm, try to feed them as he could. In 1918 arrived a #pandemic from USA, the so-called "Spanish flu" /25

Mina's mother died for it, leaving orphans all her 8 children, therefore Mina had to start to act as a mother for her little brothers and sisters. She decided to marry Aurelio, but they were of 2 different countries in war, no marriage was allowed. About at that time arrived /26

Alcide #DeGasperi, a loyal deputee of the Vienna Parliament, political enemy of the irredentista #CesareBattisti. Alcide was a catholic with strong connection with Vatican. Both countries were catholic, but since the military occupation of Rome by Savoia (in 1870 when Prussia /27

was at the gates of Paris and the Commune was going to give a voice to french proletariat Napoleon III could not help the Pope anymore) the Vatican was't recognized as a country by Italy, and the Pope wrote the "Non expedit", forbidding catholics from being /28

involved in Italian political life. Savoia were then closer to Freemasonry, italian Judaism (in Turin was erected a huge synagogue still dominating cityscape), liberals and conservatives. Alcide was an italian speaking austrian PM close to Vatican, enemy of Italy / 29

His political enemy, the nationalist Cesare Battisti, defected the KK empire and voluntarily enrolled into the IT Army. Sent on the Sette Comuni Plateau (in Italy but where Cimbrian language is spoken) he was captured in 1916. As a traitor was carried to Trento where, at the /30

Buonconsiglio Castle was executed by public strangulation. Alcide started a tour of the different refugee camps as the only leader left of the italian speaking minority in KK Empire. My family wasn't happy about his coming. He was trying to cheer them up, telling them /31

they have to resist, that he could do very little for them, so they have to stay calm and wait. My grandmother and her sisters wanted to kill him on the spot. They were fed up with war, fed up of the refugees treatment, to hell the Emperor and the kings. They needed food. /32

They kicked him out. Hoping not seeing him again. Well, during WW2 he stayed hidden inside Vatican, to re-emerge in 1948 as leader of Democratic Christians, winning the election and becoming *Italian* Prime Minister until 1953. My grandmother never stop hating him /33

Then Mina and Aurelio, her fiancé, found a prist ready to marry them in secret. I don't know if it happen in the church inside the POW camp (L) or in the Nymburk church (R). I asked if there are any archive left, but everything was lost in the WW2. /34

Same fate the tomb of Mina's mother. Lost in time. At the secret marriage the best man was a russian POW, a friend. As a gift he carved a wooden frame for a mirror. I still own it /35

In Mina's memory the day the Empire collapsed was very vivid. People smashing the Emperor pictures and Habsburg statues were torn down, people were waving Czechoslovakian flags. She couldn't believe her eyes. The war was over, the Empire wasn't anymore /36

Aurelio and Mina now were both Italians. They moved to Veneto and they married again in a church: previous documents were lost. Then they realized that Italy wasn't recognizing religious marriage, and they married for the third time, in a civil marriage. 3 weddings: not bad /37

They survived the WW2. Nazis attempted to execute my auntie Clelia - who rised me - in the last days of the war, but she was fluent in German and managed to escape her fate. Aurelio died in the '50s. I was a child when old Mina died, much later.Her name was Mina #Bombardelli /38

Ethnic problems, nationalism, pandemic, crumbling statues, war, refugees, mad leaders throwing countries into war, institutionalized violence:
doesn't this story sound familiar? It has 100 years now
#100yearsago /39

My son is Chinese. One day he will tell this story too.
What did we learn? Stay away from war, nationalism and politicians looking for power.
And fuck #fascism

/end