April 2, 2010
Almuly sisters to tell their story
Italian town of Amandola offered safety to Jewish refugees
Sisters Ena Lorant and Alisa Palmeri will share their story of survival during a presentation at 7 p.m. April 19 at St. Mary Church in downtown Evansville. During World War II their family fled Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia and was hidden in towns in Italy. Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
The clock is ticking, and soon there may no longer be an opportunity to listen as Holocaust survivors tell their stories.
That’s why Carol Abrams is so happy that the Almuly sisters will be in Evansville this April. She’s a charter member of Cypress, a committee formed to encourage teaching about the Holocaust in Evansville area schools.
Thanks to Cypress, the two women, Ena Lorant and Alisa Palmeri, have been invited to talk about their lives during World War II. Their presentation is scheduled for 7 p.m., April 19, at St. Mary Church in downtown Evansville.
The sisters’ story begins in 1941. They were living “a very comfortable, happy life” in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, Alisa said.
One morning that April, they woke up and found their father wearing a military uniform and shining his shoes. Once he left the family home and headed to fight in the war against the Nazis, the dynamics of the family changed.
Alisa was five at the time, and remembers looking at adult faces to determine “were they happy? Were they scared?”
That year, she realized “they were very apprehensive. They knew we had to escape, and they knew we had to have false documents.”
Someone made the decision that eight members of the family — including Alisa, her mother, sister and grandmother — would travel by train from Yugoslavia into nearby Italy.
“We couldn’t be seen as a large group. There were eight of us, and we divided into three groups. I had to pretend that I didn’t know my grandmother or my cousin, and we had to flee at night.
“I remember sitting in the train and not knowing where we were going. My mother was not sure where we would end up. There was a vague plan as to how we could reach Italy.”
As they traveled through their country, “Yugoslavs helped us. They were decent people. A taxi driver housed us in his own home, all eight of us.”
The family elected to flee to Italy because “word was that Italy was being helpful. The Italian government had designated certain towns as ‘internment camps’ where the people would share their homes, for a small stipend, and everyone, town’s people as well as refugees, would receive the same rations.
“In Italy, even the generals under Mussolini were known to close an eye and protect the Jews and other refugees.”
After the fall of Mussolini, Alisa’s family made the decision to head south to be nearer the approaching Allies. “We took the train, and the last stop was Amandola. At the train station we got off, and we sat in the waiting room not knowing what to do. We were hungry, tired, and we were scared.
“The son of the station master saw us, and he went and told his father, ‘There is a family there with children and a old lady.’
“The stationmaster invited us upstairs and he shared the meal, whatever they were eating. They literally took the children in their laps to feed us.”
The town’s physician and a Msgr. Verdini who oversaw the Catholic parishes were both notified of the family’s arrival. “I don’t know when they figured out we were Jews,” Alisa said, “but they housed us that night, and they proposed to take care of us in the town.
“It was extremely selfless and generous and a humane thing to do. There was no hesitation on their side. We lived there one and a half years.
“They made us really feel safe. They knew that if the Nazis found out that they were hiding refugees, their lives would be in danger, but nobody — nobody — in town told on us. They just hid us.”
At one point, rumors circulated that the Germans had “sort of an inkling people were hiding in the town.”
A decision was made and Father Roscioli, a pastor with a parish nearby in the mountains, brought the family to stay in his home with his mother until they could safely return to Amandola.
During their stay in Amandola, the sisters attended the local school and made friends with the town’s children. “We would go the church regularly. We loved going to church.
“We learned the prayers, and we participated in all the pageantry of the church. It was a happy experience.
“In Belgrade, we were secular Jews and we didn’t go to Temple. We were very religious in a spiritual way.” In Amandola, “church was something new for us and we liked going to the church.”
They came to know both Catholic priests well, and continued to visit them as well as all their friends in Amandola after the war. Of the two men, she said “there was never a question in their mind” and of that of the town’s people, of not helping the family.
She said she never asked why they had helped. “It was not a question we could ask. They would have answered, ‘Was there any other way?’ You help somebody in need, and there was never the question that maybe you shouldn’t have.
“They said in church you help people who need help even if they are strangers.”
During the later war years, there had been no word from her father. “We didn’t know if he would ever come back, and we thought he had died.”
At the end of the war he was liberated from a Nazi camp, and he began “desperately” trying to find his family. Through the Red Cross he learned that many Yugoslavians were living in Italy, and he began traveling from town to town searching for them.
“He just showed up one day,” she said. “It’s an extremely emotional story.
“A woman came in screaming and crying that our father was outside. We were crying, and we thought she was so cruel to say such lies. Then we saw this man, and we saw this was our father.
“It was very emotional — and for him too. We were so lucky. We hung on him. We didn’t want to let him go.”
During World War II, Alisa and her family experienced incredible cruelty and incredible kindness. She has chosen to remember the kindness.
“My family was always a positive family. They really believed in the goodness of people, and that was also passed on to us.
“I have a hard time seeing the bad. I see the glass half full, that things can be better. That’s why we tell our story.”