Liberation

Enough sadness,  mom was liberated on Easter Sunday, 1945 by the "good looking Americans and they  looked like angels without wings".  Mom weighed approximately 85lbs "soaking wet"she would say.  She said at first she couldn't eat, everything the soldiers would give her made her sick.  In time and slowly mom was able to keep food down without getting sick.  Times were very different then and it took years for families to get in touch with each other.  This was the hardest part for me to understand, why mom didn't just go straight back to Italy.  But there were no phones, no cars you couldn't just go where you wanted because of curfews and shortages.  Mom tried to find her mother through the Red Cross and they told her she was dead and everyone in the house, she would later find out it was her oldest sister Elizabeth and her husband and children who were killed in a bombing.  So at first mom thought she was alone, until she met her high school sweetheart.  I don't know why he was in Germany but they quickly fell in love and got married by the Justice of the Peace, planning on going home later to get married in the church which was considered the real marriage back in that time.  Giovanni was a cute fellow with curly dark hair, and mom said he was very sweet.  Mama got pregnant right away and 3 months later he was killed by a bomb that had not gone off during the war.  I can't imagine the sorrow my mother must have felt.  To live through the horrors of war, to find a little happiness and then it be taken away.   Mama had my sister in the convent in Germany, because his mother would not accept their marriage as legal and so would not accept mom into the family.  I can't imagine the sadness or loneliness she must have felt.  But she said the sisters took her in and helped her get back on her feet.  Now time moves forward and mom was in Bayreuth, Germany working for the French consulate as a translator. She rented a apartment with a friend and had my sister with her.  Now that handsome American soldier will come into the story but you will have to wait for that post.  Ciao, Maria