John Simkins
Ever since Keith Killby started awarding study bursaries to young Italians our aim has been to prioritise descendants of the brave Italian families who, at risk to their own lives and property, hid escaped PoWs. The intake of 2026 is no exception. Indeed, half of the 43 young people whom we are welcoming this year – selected from over 100 applicants – are great-grandchildren of families who sheltered escapers and others in peril.
In this newsletter, we print the stories of seven of these families, who lived in different regions of Italy, as told by the students themselves in their applications for an award. Some of these stories are tragic, all of them are touching and inspiring.
We begin with this story by 18-year-old Niccolò Baccani,who comes from the town of Figline e Incisa Valdarno (Florence) and has chosen the language school at Wheatley (Oxford) for his bursary. See the other six stories at the bottom of this article.
“My paternal grandparents, both born in 1931, lived in Casentino (Tuscany) during the Second World War, and they told me several very touching stories of the war. They were just children, but they were very brave, especially my grandfather, Oliviero. While returning from a field which he had harvested to take potatoes to foreign soldiers who were hiding in the woods near Vertelli, he was stopped by some German soldiers who began asking him questions about the potatoes. He didn’t understand anything, but he made eating noises to them, trying to let them know he was very hungry. The soldiers laughed and made fun of him, but luckily they let him go.
Unfortunately, they took the mandolin my grandfather always carried with him because he loved playing it, and they destroyed it by throwing it off a cliff.
My grandfather says he wasn’t afraid; he did what his father told him to do. He was just a child, so they thought the Germans wouldn’t stop him.
My grandfather didn’t know the nationalities of the military prisoners hidden near his house, but he said they were good people.
Oliviero died in 2013. His wife, my grandmother, Bianca, who is 95 years old, had lived near Poppi, in the province of Arezzo, and had a brother and six sisters. She was very scared because she was afraid the German soldiers would capture her 20-year-old brother and her father. But thanks to the help of a Polish soldier, they had got a tip-off and were able to hide the men of the house in time. They all got into bed, and her father and brother, wrapped in sheets, acted as pillows. Luckily, the Germans didn’t notice and left.”
