1943, Part 1 Summary and Analysis

The diary in January begins with present tense narration of the arrival at La Foce of seven children, six girls and one boy, all taking refuge from fighting in Genoa. The children, the Marchesa writes, had been hidden for two months in a tunnel beneath the city, were all homesick, all ill, and eventually able to cry themselves to sleep.

The Marchesa contemplates the social, political and military reactions to a series of Allied bombing raids on Italian cities, saying the primary response of the Italian people was resentment - of the Allies who conducted the bombings, of the fascist government who created the circumstances that led the Allies to think such bombings were necessary, or of both. She later describes the arrival of another group of children refugees and how, when their mothers came to visit, they insisted upon leaving...