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When the Italians declared the war, bombings started. Our houses, which were made of stone, were not that strongly built and couldn’t survive a bombing. So we decided to build an air raid shelter. This shelter was on the lower floor.
It was a corridor that led from the servant’s room to the kitchen, and this door we closed, my uncle put reinforced concrete cement and I don’t know what else. The people living next door were also coming to this shelter. In order to deal with our fear my parents would say, ‘We have no fear because if the bomb falls at the front side of the shelter we will come out from the back side.’ I really think that had a bomb fell upon us everything would have come down. My aunt would not come, as she had moved to a house in front of the sea.
It was a corridor that led from the servant’s room to the kitchen, and this door we closed, my uncle put reinforced concrete cement and I don’t know what else. The people living next door were also coming to this shelter. In order to deal with our fear my parents would say, ‘We have no fear because if the bomb falls at the front side of the shelter we will come out from the back side.’ I really think that had a bomb fell upon us everything would have come down. My aunt would not come, as she had moved to a house in front of the sea.
Period
Interview
Yvonne Capuano-Molho