I Will Come Back for You is based on a story I often heard as a little girl. It is all true—the detainment; the visits; and the cigar drink, bicycle escape, and piglets—but I have changed the ending for the sake of simplicity.
In 1933, because of growing anti-Semitism, my mother, Sabina, and her first husband, Jacob, left Nazi Germany to settle in Italy. For several years they lived peacefully, as Jacob set up a medical practice and Sabina gave birth to two sons. They loved their adopted country.
Unfortunately, a few years later Italy also began passing laws discriminating against Jews. However, unlike Germany, Italy did not—at first—imprison them.
World War II began in 1939 after the Nazi invasion of Poland caused France and Great Britain—known as the Allies—to declare war on Germany. On June 10, 1940, Benito Mussolini, Italy’s dictator, declared Italy’s entrance into World War II on the side of the Germans. The very next day, Italian police began to round up foreign Jewish men like Jacob, sending them first to prisons and then to internment camps or enforced residences. Women and children later joined the men. Sabina managed to avoid this fate because of a friendship with a minister in the government who gave her papers allowing her and her sons to remain in Rome. They visited Jacob on weekends.
In late 1941 the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. The Italian armies suffered great losses, and in September 1943 Italy surrendered to the Allies. But this did not bring an end to the fighting. The German army, already scattered throughout Italy, was determined to push back the Allies. Some of the fiercest battles of the war occurred in Italy after it had surrendered.
Life became much more dangerous as the German army swept through, trying to crush opposition and deport the remaining Jews. Despite the risk, many Italians chose to hide their Jewish neighbors. Incredibly, about eighty-five percent of the Jews in Italy survived the war, more than in almost any other European country.
Bands of men and women formed groups—called partigiani, or partisans—to resist the German invaders. They met in secret and blew up bridges, helped wounded Allied soldiers, and did whatever they could to disrupt the German army.
Sadly, Jacob, who joined the partisans, was captured and killed by the Germans in May 1944. Sabina, by then also a partisan, was shot but survived, thanks to nurses who hid her in a hospital laundry room and cared for her. While the Marche region near Rome, where these events took place, was liberated in June 1944, the Germans were not completely defeated in Italy until April 1945.
My mother and my two half brothers came to the United States in 1946. Jacob was posthumously awarded the King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct, and my mother was honored with the King’s Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom, both from the British government. In 1996 she received the title of Cavaliere Ufficiale, one of Italy’s highest decorations for public service.