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Franchini second of two Jewish women

In dark times. Diaries of Otto and Emma Lea de Rossi Castelli. Two Jewish women between 1943 and 1945 , Belforte & c. Publishers, 2000 Livorno

But the diary is literature? No, right? Yes, right? All right, 'it does not matter.
true facts, true stories, mixed with ordinary daily life and historical dramas and collective superstructure that is probably what makes it so exciting reading two diaries, published on the initiative of the Municipality of Livorno, which tell the adventures of two very different women between them through the same difficulties and anxieties.

Lea Ottolenghi is 22 years old when she is forced to leave Livorno and seek refuge in Switzerland, Emma de Rossi Castelli has already 75 when he has to flee the countryside and move several times to escape deportation and hide from the bombing.
The diaries of these two wealthy Jews who, like many others, must try to survive and escape persecution and war, are not the diaries of Paul Valery, literarily speaking. However, the freshness of everyday life and feelings (many anxieties, some cause for mirth) that leaked in advance, and these books are enough to make reading exciting and involved.

Their situation is obviously the drama of the extermination camp: both (a note in a refugee camp in Switzerland, the other among the peasants of the countryside from Livorno) manage to avoid the worst. Yet it is precisely that normality violated, full of the everyday hardships, humiliation, worry, uncertainty that emerges in their diaries to give a sense of drama with extreme accuracy and effectiveness.
are two very different women, in fact. Lea is a young girl, happy and full of strength in his diary, in addition to the continuous pleas of despair and sadness, also notes there are always funny, sometimes a little 'childish. Indeed, the period from mid 1944 until the return to Florence and the discovery of her boyfriend, is full of positive events - despite the hunger and the lack of news from relatives back in Italy: are pages that communicate a sense of how every little thing regained is a party. Emma
instead is introverted and pessimistic, and the diary gives vent to his particular concern for missing relatives and religious reflections.
In both, however, from the beginning, there is clearly a reaction to the racial laws and their progressive hardening: it is a reaction to pain and almost disbelief at being regarded as foreigners and enemies at home, in their land - and in spite of strong patriotism that is breathed in their families. "Every day - Emma writes in 1943 - are written in the newspapers poisonous articles against the Jews, who are not in good faith and is a real shame .(...) I loved Italy with all his strength of mind My. In the other war I did what was in me to compete in some way to the Italian Army. I can say life is spent in hospitals, I worked to send packages to soldiers in the evening until midnight. (...) And when fascism came to value our victory, so I rejoiced! Poor naive, poor deluded! I did not know what would bring fascism! "

sometimes replace the diaries, literature - luckily not very often.