World War II Survivor

Posted byNancy HomlitasPosted inCrime, Family, UncategorizedTags:, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My mother, born in Italy in 1928, grew up running helter-skelter in the battle-scarred streets of Bagnoli, a suburb of Naples and the focus of a blitzkrieg during World War II. After her 86th birthday, I wrote down her reflections. Playing dodge-the-bomb shaped her life, her values, and her thinking until she died at the age of 92 in 2020.

In her thick accent sustained by a lifelong hearing impairment my mother, Stefanina, said, “I was in the big-uh war-the second war. I never thought I would survive and getta old.” In fact, there were about 20,oo0 civilian casualties in Naples from military action of allied and axis forces.

“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.” (Psalm 91:7 NRSV)

Mom, the fifth of eight children, judged the importance of problems she faced throughout her life by comparing them to her experiences growing up under fascism and a war. Her father, a sea plane pilot, died before her seventh birthday. They had been living in a place provided by his job. When he passed, they became homeless.

A friend of her mother found a cave for them to use as a temporary dwelling. One night it rained nonstop and a sudden surge of water flooded it. The torrent swept away a loaf of bread and mom’s baby brother, Salvatore. David, their half-starved eight-year-old brother, didn’t know whether to save him or the bread. He saved Sal.

A Catholic convent took in Mom and two of her younger siblings. Her brother and sister liked it there-she didn’t. Her hands flogged the air as she spat out her words like tainted food. “The nuns make-uh me work all the time and they no let me go to school!” The convent staff cared for them for five years.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1 NRSV)

When the war started in 1939 and food supplies diminished, the convent returned the three siblings to their family. They had moved out of the cave and Mom seemed pleased with the new arrangements. “Our apartment had one bedroom. We sleep anywhere we want on the floor.”

When discussing food shortages, she erupted like Mount Vesuvius. “I was in the war! We never throw away food! My brothers-they would go fishing and trade extra fish for bread. Seaweed-we heat it up. Dandelions-we cook(ed) like you cook spinach. Octopus-we eat with sauce. When we no could get chicken, my mother kill-uh rabbits and cook them.”

Her mother, my grandmother, took in laundry to earn money, but couldn’t buy bread, flour, or beef with it. She used gold jewelry to barter for certain foods from the black market. When they received bread rations, Grandma gave more to her older children who worked.

“The field of the poor may yield much food, but it is swept away through injustice.” (Proverbs 13:23 NRSV)

Sometimes Mom followed people who were eating and scavenged scraps that dropped to the ground. When she swam in the sea, she’d pluck oysters from rocks to bring home for her family to eat. Her older siblings cooked because they couldn’t risk the younger ones ruining the food.

As Mom wandered the streets with her growling gut, she saw houses with families inside being destroyed. She saw buildings collapse one after another as bombs exploded like unleashed fireworks. She saw her school turn to rubble and her hopes to get more of an education dashed. Somehow, she learned to read and do basic math while she honed her survival skills.

Mom flash backed to when she dodged death from low flying aircraft using automatic weapons. “How many times the plane would come down and shoot at me! Wow!” Her eyes widened as if she were witnessing the four horsemen of the apocalypse rip through the fabric of the universe.

“When the alarm go off, like a cat I run [sic] to the shelter. One time that was wrong! A man was run(ning) behind me. He threw me in the ditch. Almost I gotta killed!”

“Though I walk in the midst of dangers, you guard my life where my enemies rage. You stretch out your hand; your right hand saves me.” (Psalm 138:7 NAB)

Seeking safety, Mom often went swimming in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Bombs didn’t usually explode in the water and there were no mines there. To protect their food supply from hungry soldiers, her brothers loaded it onto their fishing boat and anchored it in the sea. A bomb sunk it. They were devastated.

Mom didn’t have much during those war-torn years, not even shoes. She buried them in the sand to go for a swim and someone stole them. When the air-raid siren’s spine-chilling wail warned of aerial strikes, she’d race to a shelter (a network of underground tunnels and caves) to protect what she did have-her life.

She said, “The pain I was have was that I no want to die. I was too young to die.”

“The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.” (Psalm 121:7 NRSV)

And she was too young to grapple with German and American soldiers who came to her apartment building looking for girls. The children who played nearby, when asked, would point upstairs to where my mother and her three sisters lived. Henry, their oldest brother, would stand by the door windmilling a long thick stick ready to rain blows on anyone who forced it open.

Only Satan could have choreographed the atrocities Mom witnessed.

She watched an Italian soldier raise his gun to shoot her hearing-impaired mother when he ordered her to halt and she didn’t. Struck dumb with terror, Mom couldn’t scream, couldn’t move, and couldn’t help. Another soldier, who noticed her mother appeared deaf, stopped him.

She warned an American soldier not to walk on a certain part of the beach. His squad leader told him the land mines were cleared. The soldier turned to smile at my mother but kept walking. Horrified, she screamed, “No walk there!”

Then Mom said, “Boy-he blow up in pieces. See, I would go to the beach all the time, but I would always walk on the same place.”

She spoke of savagery. “I saw this drunk teenage boy walk [sic] on the beach. He touch-uh the knife (bayonet) on the belt of a German soldier. The soldier take-uh the knife and hit him in the middle of his head. He jump like the chicken with the head cut off. That was terrible!”

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’” (Romans 12:19 NRSV)

Tragedy struck the family when an American soldier driving a jeep hit Salvatore, the brother who almost got carried away by flood waters. He had a traumatic head injury but survived. Sal died at the age of 29 from a brain tumor the family attributed to that incident almost two decades earlier.

Near the end of the war, my father, who worked in the army’s bakery in Naples, became smitten with my mother’s oldest sister. But she spurned him. Instead, Mom began a relationship with my father, Otto, a man 18 years older than her. Dad arranged for Mom to emigrate from Italy to the United States aboard the Italian ocean liner Vulcania in December of 1947.

“I just marry [sic] him so I could come to the United States to eat,” she told me. That may be so, but she had someone help her write love notes on the back of pictures she mailed to him.

Despite what quickly became an explosive relationship, my brother, Mike, and I came along. Dad, a Kentucky native, worked swing shifts at a steel mill in Northeast Ohio to provide for his new family.

Mom had serious emotional scars from the war and Dad had mental health issues she blamed on his older brother who hit him in the forehead with an axe as a toddler. Neither could help the other.

Sometimes Mom would be overwhelmed and leave for extended periods. Dad would then take over. I remember him calling, “Mike! Nancy! Do YOU want flapjacks or mush?” He tried not to speak with a Kentucky drawl and say y’all. Not knowing how to fuss with braids, he took me to a barber who lopped them off.

Dad eventually had a mental breakdown. During his two years of institutionalization, Mom, still bitter over the years she lived apart from her family in a convent, left the Catholic church. She sought solace in another religion, became a fanatic, and raged at anyone who didn’t dive for cover.

John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?'” (Luke 3:7 NRSV)

After Dad’s release, he steadily improved. Sometime later my parents divorced but Dad stayed connected with the family, visited often, and helped any way he could. He died suddenly in 1981.

Even in her geriatric years, Mom remained a live wire but with less voltage. When a physician diagnosed her with metastasized lymphoma, she told me, “Nancy, if the doctor say(s) I need surgery, tell him to go to hell!” I didn’t have to-she told him.

Mom downplayed her health challenges. “If you can handle the big-uh war, you can handle almost anything. I never thought I would survive and now I’m 86!” The disease didn’t take her life until six years later.

No matter what problems Mom faced, she worked them out-usually with profanity that could send Satan yelping back to the depths of hell with his pitchfork wrapped around his horns. She parented as best she could, and my brother and I learned important life lessons from her, especially love God above all else.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30 NAB)

Even though Mom survived the bullets, the bombs, and the land mines that quaked the earth under her juvenile feet to live to be 92 years old, she never escaped the impact the war had on her life. Only when she read the Bible did she find peace.

Mom’s memory eventually faded with little resistance, but her voice struggled to keep its Neapolitan flame when she’d recall, “I was in the big-uh war-the second war!”

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Published by Nancy Homlitas

The stories and photographs I share are meant to brighten moods and spawn smiles. There's nothing more hilarious than a true experience, especially in hindsight! And there's nothing more uplifting than a pleasing picture, particularly if it enhances a story. As a feel good bonus, blog posts will include relevant bible verses.

96 thoughts on “World War II Survivor”

  2. I feel embarrassed to complain about anything after reading about your mom’s life. What an environment to grow up in. I have neither witnessed someone get killed or had someone shoot at me. I don’t see how someone can block those things out of their mind. I had a Jewish professor in college who lost his entire family when the Nazis invaded their home. He stayed hidden (eight years old, if I remember correctly) and went undiscovered.

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    1. People forget all too soon about history and even try to sweep it under the rug. But it’s important to learn from the mistakes of the past, and it’s important to hand down their stories. Thanks for commenting, Pete, and sharing the story about the Jewish college professor. 🙂

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    1. Yes, war is traumatic for the soldiers and the civilians. It’s destruction has tentacles. During your amazing travels, you’ve posted the damage and destruction of many ancient ruins and buildings due to war. Thank you for your comment, Maggie!

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  5. Nancy, thank you for these poignant memories (with very apt quotes from the Bible) of your Mum and the trauma she endured throughout those war years. Her trauma and your Dad’s must have impacted you and your brother too, when you were growing up. I’m glad she found comfort in the Bible in her latter days. My Mum was born in 1929, so they had a similar lifespan, although she died a bit younger, at 85. Living in Ireland, they weren’t as affected by World War 2 as countries like Italy, although the Germans did bomb Belfast and Dublin. My mother remembers wanting to hide her Dad in the attic, in case he was conscripted!
    My Dad’s youngest sister is still alive at 95 and she regularly calls me to recount very old stories of family history, which I jot down. I hope to put all these together in print. I believe these memories are culturally and historically very important and they should never be lost. Thank you so much for putting an excerpt of your family history here!

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    1. You’re welcome! Thank you for commenting and for sharing what your family experienced during that time. Our mothers’ generation is dwindling and, I agree, it is invaluable to record their recollections. Wisdom doesn’t come cheap! 🙂

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  7. So grateful to you, Nancy, for sharing and inviting us into your mom’s world. The photos convey so much…but nothing is as powerful as your words, conveying your mom’s memories. Thank you for introducing us to Stefanina, Otto and Elisa. 💕

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  9. As a street urchin, living in the underground cave by Trevi frountain in the sixties I understand a little bit of your story. Ragged and on the run from the navy for a drug charge (later pardoned with an honorable discharge) during the six day war. The Vatican let me in the guarded gates and I wandered through the Sistene Chapel seeking answers. I still love Italy and was scorned by the guardia as a Napolitan with my accent. I love espresso (cafe’) and belissimo Italia. Thanks for the incredible story.

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    1. You’re welcome, Norman. You have an amazing story to tell, as well! There must be many underground passageways in some of the ancient Italian cities. They offered safe havens during WWII and shelter for others like you and my mother. She loved expresso, too! I truly hope you found the answers you were looking for when you wandered through the Sistine Chapel. 🙂

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      1. Inded Nancy, I found eternity painted and sculpted. I found the beginnings of faith and acceptance for who I was, not who I thought I was. Grabbing with shortstop skills the coins thrown from tour busses to plunk into Trevi fountain. The cheap tour buses that didn’t stop but had clicky sounding passenger windows.

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    1. You’re welcome. You’re right-it’s easy to take a lot for granted. We should learn from history-and other accounts like my mother’s-and try not to repeat mistakes. Thank you for sharing your opinion and noting how her story touched you. 🙂

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  11. Oh, Nancy, this is so poignant, so compelling. I hope you’ll turn it into a book sometime. What your mother, and the Italians before and during the war, needs to be remembered. (One of Grandma Leora’s sons landed in Naples the autumn of 1944 and told some about the conditions there.)

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    1. Thank you, Joy. I agree with you and felt my mother’s story needed to be told. Your encouragement a few months ago gave me the final push to do it. There are fewer and fewer WWII survivors who had front row seats during that horrendous war. Hopefully, there stories will survive. 🙂

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      1. My daughter-in-law’s mother (Linda) came from Northern Italy with her sister (Susan–are these Italian names???) and their parents, but I don’t know the time frame or their story. Renee spent one summer during high school in Italy with her nonno, about the late 1980s.

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        1. I think Linda as an Italian name is just pronounced differently and Susan is probably Susanna. I gave the English translations for Italian names in my post. Renee was fortunate to have a summer with her nonno in Italy. Traveling when your young is the best time to take advantage of your wanderlust! 🙂

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  12. Nancy, I truly enjoyed reading this post and learning about your mother’s life and her history. I’m just stunned at all that she went through and everything she survived. How wonderful that you recorded her memories and can share this story with the world. Thank you for this wonderful post!

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    1. You’re welcome, Ann. Many people from my mother’s generation who have lived through the trauma of WWII are no longer living and time seems to gloss over what they experienced. Statistics don’t dignify the horrors of war. Thank you for sharing your opinion and letting me know you enjoyed the read. I appreciate your feedback! 🙂

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  14. There are other parts of the WWII that receive more attention than the Italian campaign, but it was a bloody and hard fought. The Germans fought doggedly to block the Allies has they attempted to move up the peninsula, and Naples saw much of the action. https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-europe/italian-campaign/italian-locations/italy-naples.html
    Naples is just north of Salerno, where the Allies first invaded Italy. Naples was just south of the Gustav line, where the battle stalled until the Battle of Anzio.
    My father fought in North Africa and Italy. Since he refused to talk about it, I know little of his experience. Be thankful your mother was willing and able to share.

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    1. Thank you, Tom, for the additional information on Naples. My father, like your father, never said a word about his experiences during WWII other than he baked bread. In her geriatric years, my mother was calmer and more able to talk about her traumatic life. She was very impressed by the neatness and discipline of the German soldiers. She actually enjoyed watching them march. I wonder if your father and my mother crossed paths in Naples. It’s a small world. I appreciate your informative response. 🙂

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    1. My mother was very devout and read the Bible daily, so I can picture her having heavenly conversations, too! Despite what she’d been through, she had a kind heart. You couldn’t visit her without her trying to feed you! Thank you for commenting. 🙂

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    1. Thank you for your kind words and your empathetic response to my mother’s story. There were many strengths I gleaned from her tragic life-one was not to complain. I appreciate your opinion, Jack. God bless you and guide you in all that your write. 🙂

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  18. Oh, Nancy. Thank you for sharing this story of your mother and family history. You certainly brought their suffering to life. I’m sorry your mother and family had to endure such a tragedy. At least your mother’s faith helped her.
    War is so detrimental to a child’s mind, and we see this continuing all over the world. How can we expect peace to ever exist if we continue to cause such pain to one another?

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    1. Thank you, Mary, I appreciate your opinion. I often pray that the leaders of the world will seek peace through negotiation not war. My mother never could understand how people could kill without remorse-although, she’d express her feelings more colorfully and at a higher decibel! 🙂

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    1. You’re welcome, Malcolm. You’re right-we all have a story to tell. That story may be happy or sad, but we can learn from it either way. Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing your thoughts. 🙂

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  20. Thank you for sharing your mother’s difficult yet important story, Nancy. I agree with Joy Neale Kidney, above, who suggested these memories of your mother become a book. War IS hell, and its horrific impact lasts much longer than the months/years of battle. Will we ever learn? /My father, born in 1924, served in the Pacific arena during WW II, enlisting right out of high school. He surely suffered from PTSD, manifesting itself as depression. You’d never know it though–he was the dearest dad anyone could ask for. The depression wasn’t diagnosed until nearly three decades later.

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    1. You’re welcome, Nancy. It’s kind of you and Joy to suggest I expand my mother’s story into a book. It’s not a thought I’ve entertained, but with the Lord anything is possible! Your dear father appeared not to want to burden his beloved family. I hope he eventually got relief from his depression. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Nancy. 🙂

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    1. Thank you for your wonderful one-sentence summary of my mother’s story. Your opinion is very flattering-but I must confess-I do ask the Good Lord for His guidance! I appreciate your gracious comment and your visit to my blog. 🙂

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  24. Nancy–I’d love to hear more of your testimony as it was effected by your parent’s story. If you do a blog on it, please send me a link, so I’ll be sure to see it and read it. Thank you sharing your mom’s story. (and a little of your dad’s) Really fascinating. 

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    1. Thank you, Katie, for your interest in my blog. I will likely be sharing testimonial tales from my youth sometime in the future. I appreciate your comment and am pleased you valued my mother’s story. All the best to you, Katie! 🙂

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  25. Nancy, What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing it with us. Your mom was a very strong woman. I wish I could have met her. I suppose there aren’t many people still around who experienced WWII. God bless you today, my friend!

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    1. Thank you, Cindy, for your thoughtful opinion. You’re right, my mother’s generation is dwindling quickly. That’s why it was so important to tell her story. Fascism and war are not something to seek. God bless you, too, Cindy! 🙂

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    1. I agree with you, Rubens. We have been blessed in this country but many, who don’t know unpolished history, take it for granted. Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing your thoughts. I appreciate your opinion and kind words! 🙂

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  29. Millions and Millions of people become abstract numbers but when their stories are told they make us realize what an enormity WWII was.
    Like you, in a way I’m a child of war. I know my grandfather only from a photo very similar to that of your grandfather. He was killed by partisans and my father grew up without a father. He survived the German occupation of Greece in which roughly 400,000 people died of starvation.
    My father was the toughest man I know. He slept on the floor with a thin blanket and sometimes with no blanket at all. That got him a chronic bronchitis.
    On my mother’s side on their island, they lost all their wealth. First the Italian soldiers stole most of it, then the German soldiers stole the rest. They left only a table.
    The disance of time unites the victims of all sides in their grief and strangely enough I have no hatred for Italians but I like the Italian language so much that I even tried to learn Italian.
    You and I and most of our generation have a memory of the horrors of war through our parents but most younger people have no such memory anymore.
    This is dangerous because they have no clue about the horrors of war and when they talk about, for example, the war in Ukraine and that Putin has to be tought a lesson they talk so nonchantly about war as if it was a video game. They have no idea what war, let alone a nuclear war means. That’s why I hear some idiots talk of war as if it was a game of cricket.
    It’s important that the youth learns of the war through stories like that of your mother.
    But that’s not the only reason.
    It’s an amazing story that only life can write.
    Thank you for telling it.

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    1. You’re welcome. I felt inspired to write my mother’s story for reasons that include the important ones you’ve noted. Also, when students and adults voice their desires of government involvement in everything, that is very concerning. Fascism, Marxism, and Communism are not options, and socialism is only a step in front of communism. The middle class disappears. What happens when there are no Capitalist countries to help the third world countries? Thank you for sharing your family’s story-it was compelling. I appreciate your visit to my blog and your comment.

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    2. It is not the first time the Soviet Union/Russia has threatened the Western countries with nuclear war, and we have always stood our ground. Putin is a bloodthirsty dictator who needs to be stopped; if nobody faces him, he will just keep invading other countries.

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  30. Nancy, thank you for getting me here by liking a little comment of mine. My Grandpop Torelli came here from near Naples as a little boy, my Grandmom from there as a young woman. They met in New York and settled in West Philadelphia. My Mom was number seven of eight children – Elena, Helen!
    My husband Tom’s Dad and Mom lived in Warren for a while – he worked at Copperweld, then they moved to NW Ohio so he could go to Bowling Green State on the GI bill! He served in the Pacific arena and was a peach. Tom and I live in BG now. Lots of connections and smiles! Lord bless you, funny lady!

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    1. Hi, Maria! It’s amazing how our lives intersect with so many similarities. Copperweld is no longer operating, and all but the forge is torn down. The mill was likely booming when your father-in-law worked there. In fact, the Scout Master for my sons’ former Boy Scout troop was the Supervisor of Transportation there. Maybe your father-in-law-knew him-Tom Namola (deceased). Maria, I loved hearing about your family’s Neapolitan roots. Thank you for sharing your story and visiting my blog. 🙂

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    1. You’re welcome, Manu. I agree-war is a difficult time to live through. It’s not like a nightmare where you can just wake up and forget. Survivors relive the nightmare each day they wake up. I appreciate your visit to my blog and thank you for your comment! 🙂

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  33. Thank you for sharing. ✝️🕊

    ”Only when she read the Bible did she find peace.” Indeed, Jesus is the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6-7).

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    1. You’re welcome, Patty! I felt strongly compelled to share my mother’s story when she died in 2020. Her wartime experiences should be remembered and not forgotten. Thank you for your kind comments and for your visit to my blog. 🙂

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      1. Her story should definitely be told and you did so very well. I can’t begin to imagine the hardships she and her family went through. By the way, I thought I had subscribed to your blog but haven’t gotten notices of your posts in a very long time. I re-subscribed and hope that solves the problem, which is probably one of my own making. Have a great weekend!

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  36. Wow, Nancy! Your storytelling drew me in. It was hard for me to read some of this. Your poor mother had so much trauma in her life, and so did you. I’m sorry you had to endure what you did. The scriptures that you used as you told your story went so well with the events. I have a feeling it was God that helped your mom and you deal with life’s issues (along with some true grit). What would we do without Him in our lives? So grateful for his love and compassion in all life’s trauma. Thank you for sharing your story. So glad you liked Bill’s blog so I can come over to here and read yours. 

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    1. Thank you, Mary. We all have our crosses to bear. If we trust in the Lord, they do make us stronger. From what I’ve read, that’s what happened with Bill and you. I marvel at the strength, resilience, and undaunting faith you both had while living with his tragic disease. I appreciate your visit to my blog and your caring comments. I’m glad we connected! God bless you, Mary. 🙂

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  37. H, Bridget! There must be a problem with Word Press, because I’ve been liking many of your posts and I’ve commented on several. You’ve brought this to my attention before, Lately you haven’t been responding to comments I make so you must not be seeing them. I checked your blog posts and saw my last comment was 3 days ago in regards to “It’s a Tough Dog Life.” My comment fell between Peter’s Pondering and kggowld. I also made a comment 5 days ago on Wordless Wednesday. What’s weird is that I can see my comment and I can see that you’ve responded to others before and after my comment, but not mine. I never thought anything of it because there are only so many hours in a day. I’ll be looking at your latest post this afternoon. Hopefully, you’ll see my comment! 🙂

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    1. It’s very thoughtful of you to reread this post. It’s amazing what the human spirit can endure with God as our refuge and strength. Thank you for your kind words, Kathleen. God bless you! 🙂

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    1. I’m sorry your mother also had sorrow etched on her heart from WWII. It’s a sadness/anger that, understandably, never goes away. Thank you, Anna, for visiting my blog and commenting 🙂

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    1. You’re right, Pete. It’s all about survival in these horrendous situations. My mother would occasionally mention in her twilight years, “I never thought
      I would survive the war, and now I am old, old (very old).” Thank you for visiting my blog and sharing your thoughts, Pete. 🙂

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    1. Yes, I agree, my mother was a strong woman-a real survivor. Her faith helped her to heal from many of her mental scars caused by the war. Thank you for your observation and for visiting my blog, Nusrat. 🙂

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