Casgliadau Arlein
Amgueddfa Cymru
Chwilio Uwch
Recordiad sain / Audio recording: Damiana ("Dina") Ruggiero
Oral history recording with Damiana ("Dina") Ruggiero. Recorded as part of the Italian Memories in Wales project (2008-10), delivered by ACLI-ENAIP and funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
00.01 Damiana tells a story of a man who took a cockerel out to the village to find more food, he was shot. They were terrible times she recalls. She recalls that they were treated awfully by the German soldiers. She states again that she was taken away by German soldiers to Germany. They had nothing to eat whilst they were prisoners but eh German soldiers had stolen animals as well. She recalls one man who had all gold teeth and the German soldiers took all his teeth out.
05.40 She was around eighteen when she was taken, until she managed to escape back to her town at 21 or 22 years. She recalls that all the animals were taken. They escaped through a hole during the night and managed to get to Milan. Good people helped them along the way. They went back to empty houses. When she returned her father was ill in bed. She had to work again when she returned as they had no money. She travelled far to work on foot. She continues to stress that she wasn’t the only person who experienced these things, everyone suffered in the area during and after the war. Slowly they managed to earn money to buy a sheep and other animals to survive, and they looked to the land which was full of food from which they survived. She tells how she met her husband, her families were introduced first and then they wrote letters. When they had both returned to the village they were married. She talks of her husband and how he worked on farms as a prisoner of war in Wales.
16.56 Before the war Damiana enjoyed dances and going to church, but during and after the war these things stopped. She recalls again when her husband came home and they were married. When he left Damiana had Antoinette and had to go out to work in the fields keeping her in a handmade hut to protect her from the sun. She was given sheets for her dowry but not very much else as they were poor.