An abandoned railway station in northern Italy.

The trains no longer stop, but the layout has been unchanged since 1938. In that year, a young girl waited with her older sister on this very platform. For some desperate families, it was a time when very young workers were being sent to Germany. Germany was eagerly seeking foreign labour in return for payment. It wasn't until a year later that the plan became clear.

I can imagine her fear at fourteen, and that of her sister, only three years older. Having never left their village, this station is dozens of miles from their lives, their world. It's practically a foreign land, even if the appearances are the same: the Veneto dialect, the only language they speak, is already slightly different here.

Yet the link with the land of their childhood is still palpable, if only through the characteristic Veneto bell towers. The atmosphere changes when they timidly enter the carriage: a first for them too, crowded with young people, all appearing older.

Already, accompanied by almost premonitory squeaks, the train begins its course along the long straight line they had been observing for dozens of minutes from the platform. The left turn begins, the leap into the unknown now certain, irremediable. Next, the Brenner Pass looms, Austria having been German for several months following the Anschluss. There's no need to describe the atmosphere in the crowded carriage, as everyone tries to reassure each other, and some even sing. They are convinced that the financial contribution to their families will restore a form of dignity, which is inevitably lost when the obsession is to appease one's hunger at every moment.

There's nothing to say about the early years, which are exhausting for anyone, and even more so for teenage girls who have to work in huge agricultural complexes.
The unspeakable becomes normality, from working in the fields to roving camps with the German army. Digging the earth, not for its crops but for trenches that will consume lives and absorb their blood. On the Eastern Front, in Silesia. From volunteer workers, they became prisoners (with their breasts bandaged so as not to attract attention) for the Reich's cause. Thirty-six months of infamy, plus three more with the Russians, who had to decide on the fate of their prisoners (plains of the Ukraine or return to the motherland).

Of all the painful questions raised, the most difficult had nothing to do with the madness that had set Germany ablaze. How could parents, a society, a state, a religion, send children across the Alps in such conditions? With no local ties? Without knowing the language?

Why girls rather than their brothers?

Of course, the Italian state commemorated (after encouraging the departures) with a monument, adjacent to the abandoned station, the glorious return of the prisoners and deportees to this place. On closer inspection, the impression that it was designed to be maintenance-free is obvious—Italy never changes...

The village's name is Pescantina. The famous writer Primo Levi passed through here on his return from the horror camps, as did my mother.