Antonietta Blesnuk Paoletti was a survivor. You knew it the moment you met her intense, unwavering gaze. You could read it in her weathered and eloquent hands. You heard it in her ribald laugh, in the way she enjoyed an off-color joke and the comical theatrics of flirtation. For more than eight decades, she wore her immense attachment to life as a shawl against all adversity.
Too often, we treat the vecchi signori e signore who pass us in the streets as symbols, caricature grandpas and grandmas. Yet each of them can tell us a powerfully individual story, if we take the time to listen. Antonetta’s story had the passion and drama of an epic.
Her journey to Barga began far to the east, on June 22, 1941. Early that morning, Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa, the largest single military assault in history, swept into Antonietta’s native Ukraine with 190 Axis divisions, an army of 3.5 million. By January 1942, Antonietta herself was part of an army of nearly 3 million slaves headed in the opposite direction – marched under armed guards to forced labor camps in Germany, where most of them would die. She was 16 years old.
Sometimes, in a quiet moment at Aristo’s caffe, she would speak of the horrifying years before her liberation. The only thing that kept her alive, she once told me, was love. She’d met a young Italian in the camp, a frail but determined fellow slave from the small village of Filecchio near Barga. They clung to each other through the indescribable fury and slaughter of the Third Reich’s collapse. Then they walked home together to the Serchio Valley. Six months later her husband was dead of tuberculosis. Antonietta, still a teenager, was a widow.
She married again, into the Paoletti family, had a son, and worked for eight years in the metallurgy plant at Fornaci. In the 1950s, the family emigrated to Dumfries, Scotland – the home of Robert the Bruce and Robert Burns – where she worked 18 years more in a textile mill. Widowed again and a pensioner, she returned to Barga in the 1980s. It was the “luogo del mio cuore,†she said, “the home of my heart.â€
Many of us with our own hearts in Barga lost them to Antoinetta, (more here) listening to her laughter, punctuated only now and then by the memories of a war that altered everything for her. She was too alive, too enamored of the world, to dwell on its terrible sorrows. Too fierce to imagine surrender. Her other great love, her son Nello, understood that, and waited to bring his mother back to Scotland until cancer left no choice. She died on June 21, almost 67 years to the day after Operation Barbarossa.
— Frank Viviano
My wife Samantha and me are so uncool we’ve only been to Aristo’s bar twice. The first time we went, there was nobody there. We had a drink and we talked about stuff and we left. The second time we went, there was still nobody there, so we got a couple of beers and settled down to play with our baby daughter on the little table outside. Then Antonetta turned up.
And this woman who had once been a slave labourer and who had seen so many things and so much tragedy sat down with us and talked and laughed and played with Saska for an hour and a half, all the while full of joy and talking of the positive things in life. Our lives and hers overlapped only for a brief insignificant interval of her eighty-odd years but it is a moment I remember with pleasure and affection. I was very sorry when I read Frank’s story. Our condolences to her family.
I first met Antonetta two years past on a rainy October day. I was in Barga for the first tine – for one week. She made my week! I came back to Glasgow and I talked about her all the time; she made such an impact on my life. My partner Jim and I went back last summer and every day was Ground Hog day – she never knew us from one day to the next – but she made us laugh – she was fantstic!! We went for dinner with her on our last night and we had such a great time. She was amazing. We are returning to Barga in July with my sister and brother-in-law who have never been before. They were so looking forward to meeting her but sadly its not to be. I hope she knows how much she has affected our lives. RIP Antonneta With much love Veronica XXX
Lovely article Frank, full of emotion. Thank You.
I was at Antonietta’s funeral yesterday in scotland. I last visited her in Barga in January. The funeral was very well attended and there was a most poignant service which was beautifully conducted visually and musically. Her son Nello and daughter Anita held a lovely reception in their home with lots of friends and good food and wine.
Eleanor
For a woman who did not like to travel, Antonietta’s life was an incredible journey.
I met Antonietta 4 years ago. She was essentially a very private woman, who did not dwell much on the past, but embraced every day, and loved her life in Barga.
I too attended Antonietta’s funeral in Dumfries in Scotland. Nello could not have paid a finer tribute to his Mother, with his thoughtful service that was a celebration to her amazing life. The music was very moving and at times so stirring. I felt very moved by the service.
I applaud the brave and remarkable Antonietta, who I will miss when I visit Barga.
What an amazing woman,an inspiration to all who met her and knew her story. Her legacy lives on in Nello and Anita.
My love to both of them -who were able to support so tenderly in her last days.