Every window was lit by the sea
An article that delves into the history of South Salento and recounts the reception in Leuca of Jewish survivors of the death camps
Massimo Buccarello is an intercultural mediator at the foreigners’ desk of the Ambito Sociale Territoriale of Gagliano del Capo (in the province of Lecce) and an operator of the “Nessuno è straniero” desk of the Caritas Diocesana of Ugento-Santa Maria di Leuca.
In the light of his experience with today’s refugees, who land along the coasts of Salento, his historical account acquires even more value and shows how mercy, charity and welcome are timeless values
(by Massimo Buccarello)
This is a true story, but it sounds like a fairy tale, and fairy tales always tell of fright, of fear.
Fairy tales are used to evoke terror and then protect children and give them the strength to resist and be brave.
This fairy tale would have appealed to Tolkien because it is set in a land similar to the Shire, the land of the Hobbits, the half-men who save Middle-earth from destruction.
Tolkien narrated his epic with the trenches of World War I in mind and elevated the humblest of people to the rank of heroes: before Kings, before Gandalf and the Wizards, before Elves and the mighty Dwarves, Frodo, Bilbo, Sam and, in his own way, even the tragic and damned Gollum are heroes of his saga.
This little epic fairy tale tells of a tiny piece of land jutting into the Mediterranean Sea, lapped only by the tragedies that ripped Europe apart during World War II,
and how men and women who miraculously escaped that devastation found welcome
with a population that, decimated by their men’s call to arms and without having chosen it,
offered them an unhoped-for peace and unlikely quiet.
The historical context is that of the end of World War II, with the Mediterranean devastated by clashes between Allies and Axis.
September 8 is the date that best helps us frame these events. The King escapes from Brindisi, The Balkans and Greece are in flames, the slaughter of the Acqui Division tragically takes place in Cephalonia, the waters and coasts of the Mediterranean are bloody battlefields.
In the interior areas of Albania, Greece and Serbia, the partisan war is atrocious and without rest.
The Germans withdraw from the far south of Apulia, giving way to Allied troops who take control of a territory
devoid of government; they rise unimpeded as far as Barletta, where divisions of the Italian army switched to resistance heroically oppose them. Taranto is hit by a silent attack, the port of Bari destroyed by bombing .
To the south of the south, in the lower Salento, there is an unreal stillness.
The roar of planes at night is frightening, but the bombs are dropped elsewhere.
Planes fly over houses to go destroy ships in the Mediterranean, or ports beyond the Otranto Channel.
There are no air raid shelters and people take shelter in the countryside.
The Micca sank almost by accident in the body of water in front of Leuca.
The local government is run by the military leadership of the Allies (AMGOT), all old political ties dissolve, and in the small towns of Salento people live in peace without knowing it.
In three even more isolated seaside resorts something new happens: when the Allied troops arrive, the old notables lose their comforts and take refuge in the city; their vacationing abruptly stops and the villas remain uninhabited.
The beautiful Art Nouveau villas of Santa Maria di Leuca, Santa Caterina and Santa Maria al bagno, Tricase porto and Santa Cesarea are requisitioned: they are no longer the places of the long sojourns of a belle époque out of time, but become first lodgings for the troops and, shortly after, camps for refugees.
The ancient families with high-sounding names have no one in the new chambers of power to recriminate and claim the “ill-gotten gains.”
And here in our fable, magic breaks through: from the coasts, islands and ports of Albania, Montenegro and Greece, little boats arrive with families of fishermen fleeing the furious and bloody fighting going on in their lands.
The inhabitants of the nearby coast, so similar to those of Salento, are welcomed and housed in these special camps: the displaced person camps set up by UNRRA, the first agency of what would soon be THE ONU.
Shortly thereafter a second magic happens: out of nowhere (and from internal communication routes) appear groups and families speaking distant, Nordic languages. Derelict men and women arrive, desperately fleeing war and the horror of the Holocaust.
They are the Jewish survivors of the death camps who reach the Cape of Leuca, a patch of land-oasis in a burning Mediterranean.
They arrive there thanks to the ongoing rescue effort across Europe, an operation at once espionage, humanitarian and dangerous enacted by the Jewish diaspora.
The refugees, who have arrived in a Salento that has been liberated and fortunately forgotten by the war, are welcomed into these villas and in these villages they return to life.
And a third magic happens: for the first time in the history of these remote villages, overlooking the Mediterranean, babies are born inside a hospital, while still for many years, until the end of the 1960s, Salento babies will continue to be born at home.
The love fruit of survivors of the horror camps, during that two-year period, were born in the brightly lit rooms of the Scarciglia Colony, with windows flooded by the sun and the shining sea.
What today is just a ruin, in those years was transformed from a summer colony into a very modern hospital, with equipment never before seen in that poor suburb.
Providing care to refugee families were not only doctors and nurses, but also nuns from the convent of Santa Maria di Leuca.
Thus, Ukrainian, German and Mittel-European Jews were able to look at the representatives of the Catholic religion with different eyes: those who in their countries of origin were part of the hate block, in Leuca were an integral part of the welcome organized by UNRRA.
A widespread and incredulous welcome, obligatory and at the same time natural for those who live in a land easily accessible by sea and without defenses. A people with a history open to the other, unable to close itself and accustomed, even in spite of itself, to confronting the different. A story full of encounters and mixtures, of clandestine landings and continuous exchanges with the other side of the Mediterranean: the story of a quasi-island that has never been isolated.
This is that forgotten tale; forgotten by those who fled and by those who hosted, hoping, perhaps, to leave behind the horror of those times.
After years of oblivion, it was only in 2004 that interest in this story was reawakened, with the awarding of the medal for civil value by President Ciampi and the inauguration, in 2009, of the Museum of the Reception of Santa Maria al bagno, where many
documents and testimonies.
There are two photographs that illustrate well the magic and horror that was experienced in the same portion of the Mediterranean during those terrible years.
The first one is on display in the Museum of Jewish Civilization in Thessaloniki and was taken on July 11, 1942, at 8 a.m. in Eleftheria (Liberty) Square: it depicts a line of adult men, all Jewish males in the city between the ages of 17 and 45, being forced to perform gymnastic exercises at gunpoint by a single Nazi soldier.
A humiliation enacted on the Jewish holy day, the family Sabbath. A humiliation that the rest of the non-Jewish population accepted out of fear, compulsion or convenience.
The oldest Jewish community in the Mediterranean was destroyed in the following days, the Romaniote and Sephardic traditions of wealthy Thessaloniki annihilated.
The second photograph is from a few months later and is on display at the Museum of Reception in Santa Maria al bagno: it shows young boys and girls intent on doing orderly gymnastic exercises on the Leuca waterfront under the guidance of teachers, the happy, committed faces of people finally free. Against the backdrop of the harbor and the lighthouse, the scene bears witness to the will of a people, devastated by the Shoah, to return to normalcy and to a fable of welcome of which the people of Salento were both spectators and protagonists at the same time. A story of humanity in Europe’s darkest years.
The DP Camps of Salento were active for little more than a two-year period: shortly after the end of the war, the Slavic refugees returned home and the Jewish diaspora organized the departure of the displaced people who left for Naples and then embarked for Israel.
For them the words that historian Eric Hobsbawm used to comment on the history of the Jews of Sannicandro apply: “Once they moved to the land of Israel, they disappeared into the historical anonymity of ordinary people making a living.”
Sometimes someone returns, like my friend Mordechai Borenstein who was born in Leuca on December 6, 1946, and came back to “breathe the same wind and see the same light of his first day on earth.”
“When there is war, two things must be thought of first: firstly, shoes, secondly, stuff to eat; and not vice versa, as the vulgar believes: because those who have shoes can go and find food, while the reverse is not true.”
“But the war is over,” I objected: and I thought it was over,
like many in those months of truce, in a more universal sense than we dare imagine today.
“War is always” – Mordo Nahum memorably replied.
(The Truce, Primo Levi)
(Article by Massimo Buccarello)
Source and Images
- Massimo Buccarello
- spazio + spadoni