Those children, children of war, orphans of the living

War spares no one, but in particular it attacks those who have no weapons to defend themselves or those who are innocent. The advancing armies bring with them their burden of death, destruction and violence. The long wave of their passage continues to make its effects felt even years later, when the cannons are now silent and the survivors have returned to their homes. The violence produced continues to hurt as Chiara Carminati explains in her “Nella tua pelle” (Bompiani, 2024, Euro 16, pp. 192. Also Ebook) narrating the events of Giovanna, Caterina and Vittorio.

These are the years immediately following the Great War and the three get to know each other and grow up together in the Institute for the children of war in Portogruaro, in Veneto. In the institute, dedicated to Saint Philip Neri, children who have a very particular history are welcomed. They are orphaned children but not orphans. They are the children of the enemy's violence against women. They are little children separated from their mothers, ignored by their natural fathers and rejected by their putative ones, welcomed by a handful of enlightened men and women religious who try to give them a family.

As Chiara Carminati writes: “At the end of the war there are the orphans of the dead and there are the children of the living. And then there are the orphans of the living. They are orphans of the living because they have a mother, who was forced first to make them and then to get rid of them, and they even have two fathers. One is the soldier who took their mother by force and made her pregnant: Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, Bosnian, it doesn't matter. The other is the legitimate husband, the head of the family, who was under arms at the time. When he returned home at the end of the war, he found one more child. An intruder, conceived and born during his absence. A disgrace. An unacceptable affront."

Giovanna, Caterina and Vittorio grow up together until their paths diverge: Giovanna is adopted by a rich couple from Padua who wants her to be a respectable young lady and changes her name. Vittorio the adventurous does not hesitate to escape but ardently desires to be captured by someone who loves him for who he is. Caterina doesn't know it but she can count on the strength of a bond that holds her and guides her, a tight thread, a new possibility.

Through their stories, Chiara Carminati tells a piece of Italian history that has been forgotten for too long, recalling events that actually happened and inspired by the files and documents kept in an old wooden wardrobe of the San Filippo Neri Institute in Portogruaro, a unique place in Europe, where the so-called children of war were welcomed, innocent children who had to deal with adults who were too often hostile, too often victims of the events and spirit of their times.