I’m leaving behind fashion and style today to give space to history and to the 70th anniversary (recurring this year) of the sinking of the Arandora Star, a forgotten Second World War tragedy.
A few years ago a friend of
mine and I started developing a screenplay about the Arandora Star (that touched upon immigration themes and attempted comparisons between old and modern immigration tragedies and wars...), but
we abandoned the project after too many people hypocritically jumped on the Arandora Star bandwagon as we were really worried that a film with a social purpose would have been turned into the next Titanic (though we would have loved to have managed to make a proper film and even get "on board" - excuse the pun - a major costume designer; at the time we dreamt about having Gabriella Pescucci in our team...so, as you can see, there was a fashion and costume study connection there...).
As time passed the story kept on haunting me and I ended up translating the “Neapolitan” parts (about singer Enrico Muzii) of the BBC documentary “Eorpa: Arandora Star” (that won an award at the 2005 Baftas), while part of my personal
research for that script was then partially used for a piece about the Arandora Star on a
Glaswegian paper.
To mark the Arandora Star anniversary I’m republishing here an interview with Rando Bertoia, the last survivor of the tragedy.
Rando used to own the Victoria Watchmakers shop in Glasgow’s South Side. The shop closed in 2006 and the interview that follows was carried out a few days before its sad end.
A Glasgow-based Italian shop-owner is the sole survivor of a little-known episode in Second World War history.
The peculiar clock and watch “hospital” called Victoria Watchmakers, owned by Oriente and Rando Bertoia, has been a landmark in Glasgow’s Victoria Road since 1943. Giovanna, Rando’s wife, assures me it was still going strong, but the recent death of Oriente and a stroke that obliged her to be off work for the last four months, pushed Rando to finally sell it. “I think we’re closing at the right time,” Rando states, “this is a dying trade, as most people nowadays buy cheap digital watches and, when they break down or stop, they throw them away.” While we chat about the history of the shop, Rando uncovers his left wrist to show me two watches, perfectly synchronised, “I always test a watch by wearing it for a while before giving it back to a customer to be sure it works properly,” he explains. In a way, time has been good with Rando who, at 86, is also the only living survivor of the Arandora Star disaster.
His father first moved in 1912 from Italy to Scotland where he worked for the terrazzo flooring specialist Toffolo-Jackson. Ermenegildo Bertoia was specialised in mosaics, an art he had learnt in Spilimbergo, in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Ermenegildo collaborated in making various mosaics around Glasgow, among them the apse mosaic in Holy Cross church, the mosaics at the entrance of the Glasgow City Chambers, the Pavilion and the old entrances of Woolworth’s and the Rangers crest on Ibrox Football Stadium. On 10th June 1940 when Mussolini declared war on Great Britain, Winston Churchill ordered to “Collar the lot”, that is arrest all Italian nationals. Every Italian man living in Britain at the time was to be interned in countries like Canada and Australia as they were considered to be a threat to the country.
Rando, born in 1920 in Montereale, near Pordenone, was taken away with his father in the early morning hours of 11th June from their house in the Gorbals. His brother Oriente, only 13 at the time, remained home. First they were taken to the police station in Strathbungo, then they were transferred to Maryhill military barracks. The first internment camp Rando saw was at Milton Bridge, near Edinburgh, he stayed there with his father till 24th June. From there, they were taken to Bury in Lancashire, where their group was joined by Italian internees from England, among them there was also Rando’s cousin, Luigi, from Newcastle.
At the end of June they were transferred again, this time to Liverpool. “We thought they were going to take us to the Isle of Man, but, when we saw the size of the ship awaiting us there, we realised they were sending us somewhere else,” Rando says. Pre-war luxury liner Arandora Star, bound to sail for Canada, was anchored at the harbour. What looked like a random selection was carried out and Ermenegildo and Rando were separated. The former was sent to the Isle of Man for nine months, Rando was picked for The Arandora Star.
Two days after the ship set sail, on the morning of 2nd July, it was torpedoed 125 miles west of Ireland by the German U Boat U47, under the command of Gunther Prien, also known as the “Bull of Scapa Flow”, as he had torpedoed and sunk the battleship Royal Oak in the Orkney Islands. Prien was returning to base from a tour of duty in the North Atlantic with just one torpedo in the submarine’s arsenal. He launched it at The Arandora Star; within 30 minutes, the ship sank.
No proper embarkation list had been compiled, and, if there was one, it probably went lost with the ship. It is estimated that on board there were 1,673 passengers, among them Italian civilian internees, Austrian and German Jewish refugees, German POWs, crew members and a military guard. 486 Italians drowned along with 176 Germans. Bodies were washed ashore in Ireland and the islands of Uist, Barra and Colonsay.
Among the Italian victims there were Alfonso Crolla, original partner of Edinburgh deli Valvona & Crolla; the father, grandfather and a few uncles of Sir Eduardo Paolozzi; Francesco D’Ambrosio, confectioner and restaurateur from Hamilton, who, at 68, was the oldest Italian on board the ship; London-based lyrical singer Enrico Muzii, of Neapolitan origins, later buried on the Isle of Barra; Father Gaetano Fracassi, who had dedicated his life to the Manchester Italian Community, and Decio Anzani, from London, secretary of the anti-Fascist organisation League for the Rights of Man. It was the biggest loss of life ever suffered by Italian civilians in a single incident outside their homeland.
“It was a terrible carry on, but, even though I couldn’t swim, I was among the lucky ones,” Rando recounts, “I had friends on board and they dragged me on a life boat, saving me. I didn’t even wet my feet.”
In his internment testimony featured in the book The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by David Cesaroni and Tony Kushner, Rando wrote, “Around us I could see the debris of the disaster and a number of life-boats and rafts floating about. I was very seasick and I remember bobbing up and down but I was lying on the floor of the life-boat. As we floated aimlessly on this great expanse of ocean and sky, I became aware of a strange and uncanny silence surrounding us; only the gentle lapping of the waves against the boat could be heard now and then to break this silence.”
Rescued by the Canadian destroyer HMCS St Laurent, the survivors were taken to Greenock, where Rando discovered his cousin was missing. Luigi, a swimming champion, had probably been knocked out by the rafts people were throwing in the water and had sadly drowned.
Heartbroken, the survivors were first sent to Birkenhead and from there back to Liverpool to embark the motor ship Dunera that, after a journey of 55 days, reached Australia. Rando was interned over there for four years, “The Australians treated me well, the soldiers were very friendly, I must take my hat off them,” he recounts, “there was a time when I was very sick, I had pneumonia, and the military doctors came in twice a day to look after me. They were my enemies, but they never treated me like an enemy.” Rando spent most of his time in internment keeping himself busy: he attended drawing classes, played chess, studied Italian, did some wood and metal working and wrote.
When Mussolini was deposed in 1943 and Italy went over to the Allies, the situation of the prisoners changed: they became allies and were offered the opportunity of working in the Australian bush cutting trees. Rando worked in the bush for a year, then found a job as a terrazzo worker in Melbourne. After a while, the British authorities asked him if he wanted to go back to Britain. He boarded the liner Mauritania in August 1946 at Sydney and arrived at Liverpool in the first week of September. A day later he was back in Glasgow, “I wasn’t yet allowed to go and work where I wanted, as I was still under some restrictions,” he remembers, “my brother had opened up a watchmaker shop and I wanted to go and work with him, but I couldn’t, so I went to work with a Scottish watchmaker. I was quite happy there, but, when the restrictions relaxed, I was finally able to join my brother at the Victoria Road shop.”
Throughout the years a constant stream of journalists visited Rando - who a few years ago was also awarded in Italy the title of Cavaliere al Merito della Repubblica Italiana - to hear his story, while world famous televisions often filmed him for historical programmes on The Arandora Star.
At present, there’s an ongoing campaign to make The Arandora Star events known and to obtain an official apology from the British Prime Minister and seek compensation for the many Italian families who suffered personal and financial loss. “I always stated there shouldn’t be an apology from the British government, but there should have been an apology from Mr Mussolini,” Rando claims, “if Italy hadn’t gone to war there wouldn’t have been any Arandora Star, so blaming the British government for what happened is wrong. I can’t say anything against the British government; after all they were trying to make the country safer. You must remember that, while many Italians were alright, there were others who might have been dangerous. There have been journalists who asked me why the U-Boat sank The Arandora Star. Well, this is not a mystery: it was sunk because Gunther Prien was a Hitlerian gangster and had ordered to sink as many ships as they could to get a medal. Others asked me if there were any signs of a red cross on the ship, but I think it would have made no difference if there was a sign of the zodiac or a red cross, that man was just out for a medal.”
Repairing watches, especially old clocks, often antique family heirlooms, gave Rando joy, “I’ve always loved this job, as I was always fascinated by discovering how watches worked, by their mechanisms,” Rando states, joking, “I would have been just happy to repair them for nothing, but you have to somehow manage to pay the bills!”
The shop provided him and his wife with fond memories: Giovanna remembers with glee about that time a mysterious suitor visited the shop asking her out for dinner, but left disappointed when she politely refused, while Rando and his brother were eavesdropping at the back of the shop.
What will Rando do now that the shop is sold? “I will concentrate on writing,” he says, smiling, his lively eyes twinkling, underlining that his handwriting is not as clear as it was when, as a young man, he first jotted down the account of his Arandora Star and internment odyssey on a scrap of lavatory paper, so now he’s switched onto typing. “I’m a bit slow at it,” he reveals, “but I try to write every night.” Who knows, maybe by losing the historical landmark in Victoria Road, we may gain a new talented writer.
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This gentleman is not the sole survivor of the sinking, two more live in South Wales and one in Dorset, at least two of them will attend an unveiling of a memorial in Cardiff on the 70th anniversary this year
Posted by: R. Stock, 60New Dock Road, Llanelli, Carms. | May 24, 2010 at 09:30 AM