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CHAPTER SEVENTH

- And man created death -

Like all students from small villages I had to go and continue my studies in a town which had a High School, so I enrolled in the second year of High School in the Ginnasio-Liceo Umberto I in Lanciano in 1940-41.

I took room and board with a family in a comfortable apartment in a modern building near the soccer field. There were five of us sleeping in three rooms. The other four students, like me, were from neighboring small towns. The living quarters were a little crowded but comfortable and clean. We soon developed a sense of camaraderie and got along fairly well. There were also other students from Fallo living in other sections of Lanciano, and we occasionally saw one another. We usually went home to Fallo for holidays, school vacations or occasional visits. Fallo at this time was one or one and a half hour away from Lanciano by the slow Sangritana train which stopped at length at every station.

My host family, a gentle elderly couple with a middle age unmarried daughter, provided us with three meals a day, two of which we took together at a large table in the spacious kitchen. The food was home
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made and very good although occasionally not abundant enough for hungry teenagers. The host family customarily assumed responsibility for the students and set certain rules by which we had to abide, the most important of which was when and for how long we could stay out. These rules of course differed according to the age of students, and for girls they were much stricter. The host family was also the immediate contact party with school officials. Since Italian parents at that time had no voice whatsoever in the running of the schools which followed a rigid national academic program and standard guidelines, these contacts were rare and fell into the category of illness or disciplinary problems.

Meanwhile the war was going on. For Italy the front line at first was in Africa and the Italians were fighting the British. I also saw for the first time some political refugees. In my case it was a Polish couple, both doctors who came to live in one of the rooms in our apartment in Lanciano. Later I understood that they were Jewish escaping from German controlled territories. They stayed with
my host family a few months and then they left.