November 10, 2009
Dear Elizabeth,
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!! It is hard to put into words what the stories in your book mean to me and my family. When my friend, Kari sent me an email saying she was bringing in a speaker that may be of interest to my family because it was about the survival of Jews in the Holocaust in Italy, I was of course, interested. The topic was dear to my heart because my father spent his childhood hiding from the Nazis in Italy.
It is because of the generosity and humanitarianism of the Italian people that he and his parents and sister survived the war. And it is because of this that he loved everything about Italy. So much so that growing up I thought he was Italian.
He told us so many times, countless stories of life in Italy during the war, of Ferramonti, convents, help from locals and the liberation by the allies in 1944. He never considered himself a survivor of the Holocaust. When I received your book in the mail I was so excited.
As always, I checked the index first looking for names of my family. As a child of a survivor of the Shoah it has become a habit for me to always look for lists first hoping to find links to my family. You can imagine how flooded I was with emotion saw number 91 in Appendix A, Ignazio Langnas. We had never heard of Campagna from my father – only Ferramonti North or South.
I was shaking and crying at the same time looking to tell the news to my brothers and my mother. Here we were, five years after my father had died and many years since he was cognizant enough to speak with us because of Alzheimer’s disease. It was a thread to a past that we could no longer hear about first hand.
I started to read the book and page after page it was like hearing his voice tell the stories again. The places, the people and the gratitude to the Italian people were the same. I took out the Shoah tapes that my father recorded before he hadAlzheimer’s and listened to him tell the stories again.
I am so grateful to you for weaving this story together. For so many years I have tried to search for names, places, anything to reconnect to my family’s lost history. You did it for me! I can’t wait to meet you. You curiosity has allowed us to paint the picture of our father’s past more clearly so that we can share it with our children, friends and the world.
People need to know what Italy and the Italian people did for us and all of humanity. If not for you and Campagna and a picture, this story would not be told.
Grazie!
Susan
