TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1021151
and her sister Donata, born in 1943. They sold off parts of the estate, divided the rest between themselves, and realized that the growing agriturismo movement in Italy could be their salvation. Agriturismo is a concept combining farm stays or agricultural activities with tourism, and in Italy, beginning in 1985, it provided subsidies to landowners to develop the business. For the Origos, it was a means to rebuild many of the abandoned farmhouses on the estate, many of which had been destroyed by a vengeful German Army upon their retreat. "My mother was very quick on this," says Lysy, "and took part in the European Community's initiative to do agriturismo here in Italy. They heavily subsidized it, restoring a lot of these abandoned farm- houses for tourist purposes. They realized that this was a fundamen- tal feature of the landscape. And of course for us, it was important that we could bring the houses back to life again." The ironies of my father's story are hard to ignore; he achieved freedom through a tragedy; his own side, the Allies, almost killed him by mistake; the people with whom we were originally at war, the Italians, are the ones who ended up saving his life. And the place to which he was emotionally unable to return is now my favorite place on earth. After the war, Iris Origo once said that every day during that peri- od required an examination between a prudence which asked, `Have I done too much?' and a compassion which wondered, `Might I not, perhaps, have done more?' For the hundreds of us who owe our lives to what she did, we know the answer. She did enough. She did exactly enough. Fo r t h e O r i g o s , i t w a s a m e a n s t o r e b u i l d m a ny o f t h e a b a n d o n e d f a r m h o u s e s o n t h e e s t a t e , m a ny o f w h i c h h a d b e e n D E S T ROY E D B Y A V E N G E F U L G E R M A N A R M Y U P O N T H E I R R E T R E AT.