While we are sleeping, the landlady comes to wake us up: there is an air raid warning. I go to the usual shelter because it’s safe, Mattiussi doesn’t want to go outside in the cold so he goes to the guesthouse basement. There’s 25 centimeters of snow outside and it’s still coming down. After 30 minutes, the siren stops, they bombed elsewhere.

The siren goes off again while we’re sleeping, but they didn’t come to Munich this time either.

Agostino, Ciccillo, and I went to Baierbrunn, 15 kilometers outside of Munich where many other men from Casale live: Antonio Aurilio, the Cerbarano brothers, Alfredo Lepore, Felice Taffuri, and many others. They welcomed us happily, we spent the night there with our fellow townsmen.

Easter! Christmas passed and Easter has arrived, and I am still far from my dear family without news of them! When will it end?? This morning we went to Mass and at midday we all ate together at a hotel in Baierbrunn. It was a special lunch: two/three potatoes wedges and a soup that should’ve been used for a foot bath. This is what our daily lunch is like in Germany. In the afternoon there is a bit of sun so Antonio Aurilio, Pasquale Migliozzi, and I take a walk to a nearby town called Grünwald, where other men from Casale and San Donato live. We find Achille Verrengia and Domenico Minchella, we say hello and then we go to the station to catch the train. We have a roundtrip ticket we got in Munich yesterday. We are about to board the train at the station when the police stop us, take our tickets, and tell us we cannot get on the train… “Today foreigners are not allowed aboard trains” they tell us. Antonio and Pasquale Migliozzi are still with us, they direct us to a place one kilometer from the station where there is a tram for Munich. So with saint-like patience, since today is Easter, we head back to Munich. On Monday we go to the same place of work, Ciccillo and I work at the same machine, Agostino is in another sector.
I’m always with Mattiussi at night, we eat at the same place, we’ve become good friends. We eat potatoes for lunch and kartoffel at night, they are not even peeled well, and there’s always that lovely soup, our pigs wouldn’t even drink it!

The siren goes off, I get up quickly and call for Mattiussi, he’s already getting dressed too. I ask him if he’s coming to the bunker with me and he says he’d rather go to the guesthouse basement. So I put on my coat and run out to the shelter, it’s already full. As soon as I get there I realize I left my wallet in my other coat, I try to go back out but all hell has broken loose so I can’t leave. While there, people of all ages come in with mattresses and clothes they managed to save from the fire, they throw them inside and run back out to save more things from their homes in flames. I also leave and run toward my room hoping to at least save my wallet with my ID and money, but unfortunately the guesthouse is a brazier of fire, it would have lasted longer if it had been made of hay! I carefully make my way back to the shelter which is 200 meters away. Along the way, everything is in flames, burned timber falls to the left and right, metal columns and steel beams fall from buildings onto the street. I have to be careful while running to not end up crushed. I go back inside of the shelter and wonder about Mattiussi- maybe he’s injured under the guesthouse’s rubble. After the robbery in the hotel last month, I had re-purchased everything I needed but now it’s all gone up in flames. I spend the rest of the night in the shelter. I have nowhere to go, no money, no ID, nothing to wear, only the clothes on my back! Since I didn’t have a suitcase, I wasn’t able to bring my belongings to the shelter and save them, but at least I’m still alive! When day comes I go outside, the shelter is even more crowded with people who lost their homes, they stay there with the few belongings they were able to salvage from the flames. Upon going outside, I see Mattiussi with his suitcases, he was able to save his belongings. He said he wasn’t able to enter my room because it was in flames. He tells me the guesthouse was hit by a huge firebomb and a fragmentation bomb, the place became a volcano within 10 minutes. He tells me it’s a miracle they’re still alive- they were entrapped by fire in the basement so they used pickaxes to break the wall into another shelter, hence saving their lives. At around 8:00 I leave to go to the factory. There isn’t a single tram running in all of Munich, for half a kilometer I see nothing but fire, smoke, and wreckage everywhere. I cannot continue ahead, the wind is blinding me, there are firemen everywhere trying to put out the flames, it’s a complete disaster. I turn around and go back to the shelter, at least I can breathe better there. I go outside at midday, there is still fire and smoke everywhere, but the wind has died down, with effort I manage to reach the factory but it too has been completely razed. The men from Casale didn’t come to Munich, there are no trains or trams. I go back to the shelter, I don’t know where to go. I have no money, no ID, and no home! I decide to go to Fasanerie-Nord. At 2:00 I start walking there, after three hours I arrive. As soon as my friends see me, they bombard me with questions. I briefly explain what happened and tell them I need to rest. They tell me they clearly saw the fires in Munich, they said it lit up the sky as if it were day. After three days the trains are running again, so we all go to work to clear the factory of rubble. Mattiussi and I go to various offices to get my disaster victim documents. We go see the landlady who has temporarily moved not too far away, and she signs our first disaster victim declaration papers.

Tonight we slept in the shelter on benches without blankets, it was very cold. By day we wander around looking for a room to rent, but no luck, there are 100,000 people without a roof over their heads now. They certainly devastated this place.

It’s very cold in the shelter, we decide to go sleep in the basement of our old guesthouse. We slowly go down there, lighting the way with some candles our landlady gave us. In the basement there are wood beds and bales of hay, it’s much warmer, we use the hay to make ourselves wonderful beds. We’re about to fall asleep peacefully when we see embers falling from up above. Five days have gone by and it’s still burning, we have no choice but to go back to our cement shelter.

Since we couldn’t find a room to rent, we went, actually we found a place where men of all nationalities are lodged, a sort of shelter but it’s different from the place I was in before. In this shelter there are two Italians: one is from Carinola and one is from Afragola, a man named Andrea Castaldi. This shelter is managed by nuns, we’re not independent, we no longer have ration cards, they make food for us, it’s not that bad, the lagers are worse. We’d like to stay here. After all my paperwork was completed, I went back to work clearing rubble from the factory, all the machines were damaged and burned, it seems they hit the bull’s-eye, just like they did with other factories.

I was given a voucher for:
Jacket and pants, shirt, underwear, socks, two handkerchiefs, a pair of shoes, and that’s all.

Today Mrs. Schumann came from Konstanz, she went with me to buy the aforementioned items. Thanks to her acquaintances in Munich, I was able to get a nice jacket and pants, even the other items aren’t bad but it was all thanks to this kind woman’s acquaintances. After purchasing these items, we go back to her home where we wait for her husband who arrives shortly after, he was also very pleased with our purchases. Mattiussi, the man from Trieste who was a disaster victim like me, is trying to get a permit to go home to gather the necessary personal items that he lost. He goes to many offices in Munich wearing his work coveralls, saying that’s all he has left. He manages to speak German since he’s been in Germany for five years.