
Cari amici,
In this increasingly divided world, where it seems political differences, intolerances, fears, and biases are turning back the clock on human rights and tearing families apart, I bring you a story of unification, of a time in Italy’s history, the Dopoguerra, in which the north-south divide ceased to exist, at least for a while. And what brought about this generosity of spirit was the concern of one woman, labor leader and journalist Teresa Noce, for the welfare of the children in the heavily bombarded and starving south. The trailer for the documentary film Pasta Nera1 calls this humanitarian effort “one of the best examples of solidarity and unifying momentum in the history of Italy.”
You may have figured out by now that I’m talking about a slice of Italy’s history depicted in a new film, Il Treno dei Bambini (The Children’s Train), directed by Cristina Comencini and based on the novel of the same name by Viola Ardone, which in turn is based on actual events. I knew nothing about this inspiring chapter in Italy’s struggles during and after World War 2 until I saw the film (available on Netflix in Italy, and hopefully in other countries too). It’s a prime example of one fantastic characteristic of the literary arts—how storytelling, whether on film or on the page, allows us to empathize with the characters and sometimes, as in this case, discover the real people who inspired those characters. Such discoveries can change our awareness and understanding of world events.
Il Treno dei Bambini inspired me to look for more information about the movement that brought children from the ravaged south to loving homes in north-central Italy, called Alt’Italia by the southerners (see sources below). Between 1945 and 1952, treni della felicità (“happiness trains”) transported more than 70,000 children away from extreme poverty—in which shoes were only dreamed of, bathtubs were nonexistent, and food was, for the most part, limited to bread and tomatoes and a few drops of precious oil—to a kind of life they didn’t know existed, where they could recover their health and gain strength in the homes of loving families. (By the way, the trains in the film, with their brown exteriors and wooden seats, look exactly like the Treno di Dante I took from Florence to Ravenna.)
In one scene in the film, taken from actual personal accounts, the children stare in amazement at their first exposure to snow. One child calls it milk, another says it’s sugar (in real life, another swore it was ricotta). For all of them, it was their first time on a train; for many on coastal routes, their first glimpse of the sea. In the north, the children discovered foods they’d never eaten, mortadella and gelato and chocolate, and the miracle of three meals a day. They discovered beds with clean sheets that they shared, miraculously, with no one, in rooms they had all to themselves. In the film, the central little boy, Amerigo Speranza (what a name! “America Hope”), discovers that music doesn’t come only in the form of his mother’s sweet voice, but also via the violin that becomes his passion and his life’s work. Language, a clash of dialects, was an obstacle for both children and the host families, of course. But the children were quick to learn, and in the schools they picked up Italian too.
For the mothers of the south, this opportunity raised fears as well as hopes. Everyone said the Communists ate children, a belief which led some of the transported boys and girls to run off when saw their hosts’ blazing fireplaces. No, other southerners said, the Communists made candles from children like theirs. Worst of all was a truly frightening, and realistic, thought: even if their children survived, would they return home? The children’s stay would be temporary, the women were assured, lasting from several months to two years. But surely some of those mothers knew their children would be forever changed, that some of them would no longer be willing to endure the hardships they’d taken for granted. Not when their host families made it clear their arms would be forever open to the children they’d come to love—and some families opened their arms more than once, taking in as many as 14 or 15 children over the years.
The woman driving this inspired act of generosity, Teresa Noce, revealed her concern for her fellow humans early in life. Born in Turin in 1900, by age 10 she was working in a factory, and within two years had joined the workers’ union. Active in the Young Socialists movement, she became a founding member of the Communist Party in 1921. She oversaw the Communist Youth Federation, and when communism and socialism were outlawed in 1925, she emigrated, first to Moscow, then to Paris, where she fought for better working conditions. She continued her partisan work in France even after it fell to Nazi Germany, until she was arrested and sent to Ravensbrück, a German concentration camp. Upon her release in 1945, she returned to Italy, where she served in Parliament and fought for maternity legislation to support working mothers. Thanks to her efforts, and those of other women in Parliament, working mothers gained the right to five months of paid maternity leave and aid for their children.
It was in 1945 that Noce and the Unione Donne Italiane (UDI), with the support of the Italian Communist Party (Partito Comunista Italiano, or PCI), launched the treni della felicità program, which originally served northern children. After seeing vast numbers of impoverished children in the outskirts of Milan, Noce asked her comrades in Reggio Emilia if they would host some children. The first “happiness train” left Milan in December 1945, carrying 1,800 children to host families in Reggio Emilia. Soon families in other cities in Emilia Romagna—Parma, Piacenza, Modena, Bologna, and Ravenna—joined the effort. Then the PCI decided to prioritize children from the impoverished south, including Lazio, Campania, Puglia, Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia. Forget any biases against southerners: those families in Emilia-Romagna (and some in Tuscany)—not rich ones, but farmers and laborers—thought only of the children, not where they came from.
There’s a still photo in the film Pasta Nera2 of a procession in which a large sign held aloft proclaims: “Siamo i bimbi del Mezzogiorno. La solidarietà e l’amore degli Emiliani dimostra che ‘non esiste nord e sud, esiste l’Italia.’ ” (“We are the children of southern Italy. The solidarity and love of the Emilians shows that ‘north and south don’t exist, what exists is Italy.’ ”) One woman interviewed in the film said the children and their families were from “two different worlds, and when two worlds meet, they both grow.”
Another woman in Pasta Nera, one of the organizers of the host families, says they were “full of enthusiasm, of generosity, of the desire to do something”—and by doing what they could for children in need, they were “puliti dentro,” cleaned inside. Che bello. Noce and her trains of happiness remind me that there are always good people in the world, no matter how ugly the circumstances. There’s always good we can do.
Tante belle cose—
Cheryl
Italian words of the day
solidarietà—solidarity
coro di voci bianche—a chorus of young children before the boys’ voices change at puberty. With origins in liturgical music of the early medieval period.
natalizia—adjective pertaining to Christmas, e.g., Christmas season = stagione natalizia. The word for Christmas (a noun) is Natale.
Sources:
“Happiness Trains” by Mary Manning
Pasta Nera, a 2011 documentary by Alessandro Piva
https://www.wired.it/article/il-treno-dei-bambini-netflix-storia-vera-romanzo-viola-ardone/
To learn more:
I treni della felicità: Storie di bambini in viaggio tra due Italie by Giovanni Rinaldi
C’era anch’io sul treno: la vera storia dei bambini che unirono l’Italia by Giovanni Rinaldi
P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites, or, better yet, order it from your local bookstore. Another fab option is to ask your library to stock it. If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’d be surprised how much a rating or review helps authors. Baci!
Pasta nera is made with riso Venere, an Italian black rice.
The film’s title comes from the eponymous song by Matteo Salvatore.
Much needed optimism
I read the book and I loved it! Looking forward to see the movie!
And I also suggest you another book by Viola Ardone. The title is "Oliva Denaro" and it is a great book inspired (I suppose) by the famous (infamous) story of Franca Viola. It is enlightening and very well written.