Giuseppe Rovetto

„21. August I was (in Czechoslovakia) and saw the invasion. I just got back from Italy. In Italy, the invasion had a great echo, many comrades returned their identity cards. One of them was (Luigi) Veronesi, our friend, an ideal communist. Then I got to Italy. The head of the factory said to me, 'Josef, you have relatives in Italy, don't you?' - 'I have.' I had an uncle in Frosinone. I had two passports. One business and the other personal. I left the business one in the drawer in the morning and at 8 o'clock my friends from Žatec, who knew I was going, (escorted me). I already had a flight ticket. I went to Rome and my uncle was waiting for me there. It was on November 14th. The (Soviets) arrived on August 21, and everyone waited for a month to see if it got better. But soon Husák was already in the government, he started cursing at the emigrants: 'Czechoslovakia is not a birdhouse!' And who could ... They took me to Ruzyně. I thanked them. I knew my uncle had no way to help me. I waited and suddenly I received a message from Milan. (Castiglioni) was in Zatec and learned that I was in Italy. He sent his officer to his uncle and left 50,000 lire there, asked me to come to Milan to talk to me. He asked me what I was doing. 'Don't go to America, he told me! You have a background here. If you want to go to Prague, you're there in an hour. What do you need? I said, documents. I need someone to guarantee for me. He said, and only the Milanese would understand this, Ghe pensi mi - I'll take care of it. Otherwise, in Italian it is "Ci penso io. "He took care of it. In two weeks I received documents from the employment office in Milan. And because I was alone, his dad vouched for me. "

"Calvary began when they took me and Anna. They left only two small children with our mother, Vilma and Frantík. Italy turned against the Germans, dissolved the alliance. My mother, as an Italian in Austria, in the Grossdeutsches Reich (in the Great German Empire), lost all her rights. The Germans wanted revenge on the Italians for their "betrayal". I was ten years old. Together with my sister Anna, who was also born in Rome, we were taken to an orphanage for re-education. We did not have Italian physical features such as dark hair, but we had eyes of a type that suited the Germans. They took us to retrain for the German race in Landshut, a beautiful town near Munich. The children were raised by very good nuns here. They didn't care if anyone was Austrian or Italian. They received me well and immediately sent me to take exams in the Oberschule (school), and when they saw that I was born in Rome and had an interest in Latin, they led me to learn to minister. They told us in the children's home that our parents died during the May Revolution in Prague. I didn't believe it, but my sister was still crying. At the end of October, I told my sister, 'I had a dream that our dad had a long coat, a suitcase, a hat and was travelling to us.' Exactly two days later, on October 22, 1945, I hear, “Joseph, Joseph!” On the first floor, I practised the violin, looked out the window, and saw my father and sister hanging from the sleeve of his coat. I almost jumped out the window with joy. Dad found us because I sent his brother postcards to Lebanon. "