This site tells of a man that was deported to the Nazi concentration camps in Mauthausen and Gusen when he was only twenty-three years old. His faith, his courage and the desperate desire not to die took him back home after 18 hellish months. That man was my father.
So many times I proposed to my dad to write of his tragic experience, I would have gladly helped him, he always refused to do it: at the beginning, remembering what happened to him, it made him suffer so much and when he felt ready about telling his experience, he decided to do it with the students and personally, he was sure that only so he could make the young people sharing of all the horrors that he had lived.In 1975, immediately after having retired, he tried to sensitize the youth about the horrors of the Nazism, and this got his mission and he kept on giving his lectures in the schools until his health allowed him. The meetings with the students were always exciting and profitable, at the end of his story the young people harassed him with questions, their thirst of knowing was my dad's greatest satisfaction, and the confirmation that the young people had understood and would not have forgotten anymore.
My father died on 23 rd July 2007, after having fought his more difficulty and painful battle, the one against Alzheimer's disease.
My dad was really a special person, he had not common human and moral qualities and I, who have loved and esteemed him very much, I could not allow that by his death the beautiful relationship that linked him to the young people was broken, and even that his tragic experience died with him. I have collected how much I have found in his “untidy” drawers by the illness: the text of the lecture that he gave every year in the Milanese schools and that I typed, the photos that he never wanted to show me when I was too young to understand, and the notes that he wrote himself with determination and then traced, when he realized that he could not remember anymore. Then, I have looked for in the memories of my children that listened to their grandfather telling in their schools his ordeal, to have confirmations and enrich the story with all the possible details, I read up consulting the sites on the deportation that are on the web and I has finally thought about writing a book that could continue the engagement of my father toward the young people and that could make him remember.
This book with its precious content, also photographic, is addressed to the students, to their teachers and all those people that will want to know the tragic experience of a man that didn't feel like dying when twenty-three years old and that fought hopelessly to come back home, he did all he could for his companions of imprisonment and, at the end, he also could forgive.
At the end of my dad's story, you will also find the moving thoughts that the students of the institute Artemisia Gentileschi in Milan dedicated him after one of his lectures: his simple way to tell, his humanity and positiveness towards the life, excited so strong emotions in the boys that wanted to note them on a diary that subsequently they handed to him.

It is me the baby that my father desired so much to know when he was deported and I have perhaps had the merit, unconsciously, to give him a strong motivation to come back home. During the years he has always told our first meeting with big emotion, the same emotion that I feel now in writing this text for him.

Displaced person I 57633 Desire not to die ©Manuela Valletti Ghezzi A displaced person to Mauthausen and Gusen and his persevering struggle for the life. English translation by Antonio Siclari "This book with its precious content, also photographic, is addressed to the students, to their teachers and all those people that will want to know the tragic experience of a man that didn't feel like dying when twenty-three years old and that fought hopelessly to come back home, he did all he could for his companions of imprisonment and, at the end, he also could forgive."

to buy this book click here

I wish the earnings of the sale of this book could be devolved to the ANED - Foundation Memory of the Deportation Onlus in Milan - it is a little tangible sign to express my gratitude for the job that they do because the displaced persons, the men like my father, are not forgotten. I wish that the book could get a useful tool for the teachers when they will face with their students the theme of the deportation. My father would be very happy of it.

Manuela Valletti
journalist