Our Darkest Night

by Jennifer Robson

  To my sister, Kate Robson: you are my touchstone; I would be lost without you.

  To my children, Matthew and Daniela: you are the reason I wrote this book. You, my darlings, are my moon, my sun, my Mezzo Ciel.

  And Claudio, my Claudio. You are my beloved. You are the hero of my story.

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  About the Author

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  Meet Jennifer Robson

  About the Book

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  Author’s Note

  Defeating the Silence

  Glossary of Terms Used in This Book

  Read On

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  Suggestions for Further Reading

  About the Author

  Meet Jennifer Robson

  JENNIFER ROBSON is the internationally bestselling author of The Gown: A Novel of the Royal Wedding, Goodnight from London, Moonlight Over Paris, After the War is Over, and Somewhere in France. She holds a doctorate in British economic and social history from Saint Antony’s College, University of Oxford, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar and an SSHRC Doctoral Fellow. She lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and children.

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  About the Book

  Author’s Note

  The following notes address some points of history and culture that merit further explanation in regard to Our Darkest Night.

  Antonina and her parents, as I imagine them, were ethnically and culturally Jewish, but in their religious practices they were not especially observant. This reflects the broader experience of many Italian Jews of the time, as well as Dr. Mazin’s personal beliefs and philosophy. My portrayal of their practices was inspired by contemporary accounts of other Italian Jews, among them Victoria Ancona-Vincent, Carlo Levi, Liliana Segre, and Piera Sonnino.

  Every place I describe in this book is real, with one significant exception: Mezzo Ciel is a fictional amalgam of San Zenone degli Ezzelini and a nearby village, Borso del Grappa, which is located on the lower slopes of Monte Grappa. I must also confess to borrowing the name for my fictional village from an actual place several kilometers north of San Zenone. I apologize to the residents of the real Mezzo Ciel for appropriating its name for my purposes, but how could I ignore the appeal of a name that translates as “halfway to heaven”? On my website you can find a link to a Google map that charts all the places I mention in Our Darkest Night, as well as an illustrated map of the fictional Mezzo Ciel and surrounding area. I have also included photographs of the places and buildings that inspired me in my descriptions of the Gerardi family’s farm, the Mazin family’s home in Venice, and the beautiful northern Italian countryside where so much of the novel takes place.

  Because the dialogue in Our Darkest Night is rendered in English (at least in its original writing), anyone familiar with the Italian language will notice that I’ve made little mention of dialect. In Italy—even more so in the 1940s than today—regional differences in language are marked not by accents (as is the case in England, for example), but rather by highly localized dialects. At first I attempted to describe the differences between formal Italian and dialect, and the confusion such variations might provoke, but I soon realized there was no straightforward way to describe the differences between formal Italian and the dialect that was spoken in Mezzo Ciel. Instead I have confined myself to a few mentions of formal versus informal modes of speech and left it at that. I beg the pardon of native Italian speakers for my consequent failure to capture the beauty and complexity of their language in all its incarnations.

  My descriptions of life on the Gerardi farm, and in the village of Mezzo Ciel, are based upon extensive interviews with my husband’s relatives, among them Lucia Bizzotto, Guerrino Crespi, Angela Gazzola, Mario Gazzola, Carmen Gazzola, Oscar Gazzola, Michela Jach, and Maria Zardo. Francesco Crespi, my husband’s late uncle, wrote a private memoir that describes his horror at being made to witness the Nazi massacre of partisans in Bassano del Grappa, as well as other notable memories of the war; I thank his sister Lucia Bizzotto for sharing it with me. Selva the dog is named after a much-loved family pet; and while one of her forebears was, sadly, shot and killed by a German soldier as she tried to protect my husband’s grandfather, the fictional Selva survives for one reason: I promised my children I wouldn’t allow her to die.

  Anyone seeking to retrace Nina’s journeys should begin with the memorials to the millions who were abused and killed by the twin scourges of Nazism and fascism. In Venice you will find a memorial to the city’s murdered Jews in the main piazza of the Gheto Nuovo, as well as stolpersteine (stumbling stones) near the last known residences of many Venetians who were deported and murdered. In Poland the museum and memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau, though often crowded, is nonetheless a deeply moving memorial. There is no memorial in Wilischthal, the forced labor camp near Zchopau, unnamed in Our Darkest Night, where Nina and Stella spent the last months of the war; its few buildings are now little more than ruins. In Bolzano, memorial friezes mark the perimeter of the now-vanished detention camp. And in Bassano, on what is now known as the viale dei Martiri—the avenue of the martyrs—memorial plaques are affixed to each of the manicured trees where thirty-one young men were hanged by the Nazis on September 26, 1944.

  This Stolpersteine, or stumbling stone, is located near the Casa di Riposo in Venice’s Gheto Nuovo. It reads: “On 17 August 1944, from this house, 21 elderly residents were deported and murdered in the Nazi death camps.”

  I have yet to visit the World Holocaust Remembrance Center at Yad Vashem in Israel, though I hope to go there one day. Among the more than twenty-seven thousand individuals named Righteous Among the Nations is the man who was the inspiration for Father Bernardi. Some might say that Giulio Bernardi, so clear-eyed in his goodness, is an improbable figure in the midst of so much intolerance and hate. I might be inclined to agree, if not for the little-known heroism of Father Oddo Stocco, a humble village priest who recognized evil, stared it in the face, and steadfastly refused to look away.

  Defeating the Silence

  In late 2018, shortly before the publication of The Gown, my son came to me with a question. He’d been studying the Second World War, and with it the Holocaust, in history class at school. As school-related questions go, it was a big one: “Is it true that Daddy’s grandparents hid Jewish families during the war?” he asked.

  I had to tell him that I wasn’t sure. I wanted it to be true, but I couldn’t be certain.

  My husband, Claudio, and I first heard the stories about his grandparents on a visit to Italy in May 2016. We were staying in his parents’ hometown of San Zenone degli Ezzelini, about forty-five minutes to the northwest of Venice, and a few days after our arrival we went to visit one of his aunts. Claudio and Zia Maria were chatting in their local dialect when, in response to his questions, she began to talk about the war. I still remember the moment when I managed to untangle a few words from their conversation. “Hebrei,” his aunt said. “To nonno i ga scónti,” she added. Jews. Your grandfather hid them.

  We peppered Zia Maria and our other relatives in San Zenone with more questions, and were astonished by their revelations. They told us that Claudio’s grandparents, Giovanni and Emma Guarda, had been asked by their parish priest to offer shelter to Jewish families in danger of arrest and deportation. Although Giovanni and Emma were poor—they shared a small farmhouse in San Zenone with their four children and his elderly mother, as well as his brother, sister-in-law, and their two children—they said yes. Between 1943 and 1945 we believe they sheltered at least three different families, though there may have been more; their surviving children’s memories are unclear on this point.

  My husband’s aunts do recall a number of telling details. The roof of the adjoining stable was the place where their guests hid when strangers came to the door; to further conceal them, a large wardrobe was pushed in front of the window that led to the stable roof. His aunts also to
ld us how, at the very end of the war, their father gave away precious food and blankets to retreating German soldiers because he was fearful they would come into the house, take what they needed, and discover the people he was still faithfully hiding. Unfortunately, although they remember many details of the people themselves, his aunts can no longer recall their names. Giovanni died in 1991, and Emma before him in 1978; my husband never had the chance to speak to his grandparents about their lives during the war.

  That is where our research would have ended if not for my son’s timely question. Could the stories be true? I decided to try to unearth some answers.

  I began by consulting the online databases maintained by Yad Vashem to see if there was any quantifiable evidence of Jewish families being sheltered in San Zenone. To my surprise and relief, there was. Father Oddo Stocco, who served as the town’s parish priest from 1931 to 1948, was named Righteous Among the Nations in 2010 for his heroism in saving more than fifty Jews by securing hiding places for them among his parishioners.

  Some of those parishioners were also accorded the honor of Righteous Among the Nations, though not my husband’s grandparents. But did this mean they hadn’t been involved in Father Stocco’s efforts? Or only that the accounting of those who were involved was incomplete? One sentence in the citation from Yad Vashem gave me hope, for it confirmed what I already suspected: “The entire village helped [Father] Stocco feed the dozens of Jews and many other refugees and political fugitives, despite the heavy burden this entailed, because they respected his leadership and good deeds.”

  As I write this essay, in the early summer of 2020, I have yet to uncover documentary proof of my husband’s grandparents’ involvement; it may no longer be possible after such a span of time. The historian in me hesitates, ever cautious, wanting more proof, yet I cannot say that such evidence is truly necessary. And that’s because the story of Giovanni and Emma Guarda’s humble courage, the story that led me to Our Darkest Night, is not the reason I wrote this novel. I wrote it because my son’s question made me wonder about the people who were forced into hiding. What were their stories? How did they survive? And might it be possible for me, a Gentile, to write a story from their point of view?

  Nina is at the center of this novel because it was her perspective, from the beginning, that resonated most profoundly for me. Every time I sat down to write, it was her eyes that allowed me to see. No other point of view seemed possible, let alone desirable. The actions of many of the Gentiles in Our Darkest Night, among them Nico, Father Bernardi, and Rosa, are selfless and heroic, as indeed were those of Father Stocco and the parishioners of San Zenone. They were heroes, to be sure; but the heart and soul of this novel belongs to Nina, and with her the thousands of Italian Jews who were persecuted, terrorized, murdered, and silenced.

  In the creation of Our Darkest Night, I studiously avoided any alterations to the historical record. I also decided against featuring any known historical figures among my central characters. To fictionalize the story of Piera Sonnino, for instance, whose memoir This Has Happened was so central to my understanding of the Shoah in Italy, was unthinkable. In so doing I would be subduing her truth into my fiction. I would be silencing her voice.

  Instead I searched for spaces within the historical record where my characters might plausibly reside. To employ but one example: there really was a deportation train that left the detention camp in Bolzano, Italy, on October 24, 1944, and arrived at Birkenau after an indescribably harrowing four-day journey. Rather than remove any single voice from the historical record, and subsume that person’s truth into my story, I decided to add Nina’s voice to the chorus of women on the train. In so doing, I sincerely hope that I have helped to amplify the voices of those who were forced to undergo that journey, as well as the millions more whose lives were cut short by the horrors of the Holocaust.

  I was inspired to adopt this approach by Susanne C. Knittel’s The Historical Uncanny: Disability, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Holocaust Memory, in which she describes the act of “vicarious witnessing.” Such an approach, she explains, “does not entail an act of speaking for and thus appropriating the memory and story of someone else but rather an attempt to bridge the silence through narrative means.”

  Millions were silenced by the Holocaust. More than seventy-five years on, the inexorable passage of time is silencing the last of its survivors and its witnesses. Each year there are fewer among us who can bear direct witness to the horrors they endured; soon they will all be gone. And that is where vicarious witnesses, among them writers and historians like me, can attempt to defeat the silence. With my creation of Nina, her family, her struggles, and her triumphs, I am trying to make a difference. I am trying to act as a vicarious witness so these stories are not lost.

  Antonina Mazin is a construct of my imagination, but her story was inspired by those of real people who lived, suffered, and died; people who loved and were loved; people whose lives have ended, but whose existence mattered. Their sacred memory must not be allowed to fade.

  Glossary of Terms Used in This Book

  Ammassi: the compulsory sale of grain and other farm products to state-managed granaries and distribution centers in fascist Italy

  Appell: term for roll call in the Nazi camp system

  Aufseherin: rank of female guard in the camp system; roughly equivalent to overseer

  Blockowa: informal title for female guards in the camp system; of Polish origin

  Brodo: broth or a light soup

  Caffè d’orzo: a substitute for coffee made of roasted barley

  Caffettiera: stovetop coffeemaker in widespread use before the invention of the more familiar moka pot

  Calle (plural: calli): Venetian term for a narrow street

  Campanile: bell tower; typically a separate structure from its adjacent church

  Cantina: a storeroom, typically belowground, for food and wine

  Carabinieri: Italy’s national police

  Casa di Riposo: rest home; typically used to describe old-age homes

  Crostoli: deep-fried squares or wide ribbons of lightly sweetened dough

  Durchgangslager: transit camp

  Erysipelas: a bacterial skin infection; commonly known as St. Anthony’s fire

  Festa: a party; used to describe both family gatherings and larger community celebrations

  Fondamente: quay or bank

  Gheto: the Venetian spelling of ghetto; the name is derived from the iron foundries that once occupied the islands where the historic Jewish ghetto was first established in Venice

  Gondoliere: person who steers a traditional Venetian gondola

  Grappa: a grape-based brandy

  Guardia: the Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, or National Republican Guard, which partially replaced the Italian national police between December 1943 and the end of the war

  Hauptsturmführer: a Nazi paramilitary rank roughly equivalent to that of captain

  Il Duce: the nickname by which Benito Mussolini was known; translates as “the duke” but in his regard meant “the leader”

  Kommando: a work detail or detachment in the Nazi camp system

  Kübelwagen: a military vehicle similar in purpose though not design to a U.S. jeep; made by Volkswagen

  La Befana: in Italian folklore, the figure who brings gifts to children on the eve of Epiphany; the following night she is welcomed home by the light of a large bonfire. In some regions, by contrast, her effigy is burned in the bonfire

  Ladino: a form of Judeo-Spanish once widely spoken by Jews of Sephardic descent

  Nonno/Nonna: the Italian terms for grandfather and grandmother

  Novena: the Catholic custom of devotional prayers that extend most commonly over nine days

  Oberaufseherin: a rank of female guard in the Nazi camp system; translates as senior overseer

  Obersturmführer: a Nazi paramilitary rank approximating that of first lieutenant

  Ospedale: the Italian term for hospital or, less commonly, orp
hanage

  Osteria: a tavern that sells wine and simple food

  Pastina: tiny pieces of pasta, typically cooked in broth; often served to children and invalids

  Pinza della Befana: a polenta-based cake consumed at the feast of the Epiphany

  Pippo bombers: the name given to the unseen airplanes, long thought to be apocryphal, heard at night in northern Italy in the final years of the war; some historians now believe they were De Havilland Mosquitos on Allied reconnaissance missions. (They are also the aircraft that appear on the cover of this book.)

  Polpette di matza: the Italian term for matzo balls

  “Polvere di Stelle”: title of the Italian translation of the classic song “Stardust”

  Republic of Salò: informal name for the Italian Social Republic, the Italian puppet state established in September 1943 and controlled by Nazi Germany; its nominal head was Benito Mussolini

  Riel: the local dialect term, peculiar to the region near Bassano del Grappa, for the large bonfire held at Epiphany; in other parts of the Veneto it is called a foghera

  Sanpierota: a traditional fishing boat of the Venetian lagoon

  Schutzstaffel (SS): a paramilitary force that eventually assumed responsibility for not only Third Reich security and intelligence but also the planning and direction of the coordinated Nazi effort to exterminate Europe’s Jews

  Scola: the Judeo-Italian term for synagogue; Nina’s family attended the magnificent sixteenth-century Scola Espagnola

  Sicherheitsdienst (SD): the intelligence agency for the Nazi party

  Sopressa: a cured pork sausage similar to salami

  Sottoportego: an alley that passes under the second story of a building

  Torta: a flourless Italian cake; often made with ground nuts in place of flour