TDN Weekend December 2016 Issue 9
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/1021151
La Foce sits on the ancient pilgrim road from Florence to Rome, with a villa built in the 1400s as a stopping point for travelers. When they bought it, La Foce, located in the Siena province, con- tained dozens of crumbling tenant farms, a run-down central villa, and exactly one tree. The area is known for its `crete senesi,' dusty grey hills which challenge anything to grow upon them. "As bare and colourless as elephants' backs, as mountains of the moon," Origo wrote. She described it as a desolate place, a description hard to imagine when you see it today. The Origos brought modern farming techniques to the land, rebuilt the farmhouses, combated an 80% illiteracy rate with a school, built a hospital and community center. They turned around decades—cen- turies even—of poverty and struggle for the inhabitants and created something of a modern, thriving farm community. And they turned the land into the cultivated beauty you conjure up when you picture Tuscany today. In 1939, 15 years into the Origos' project, the war arrived on their doorstep, bringing destruction, death, and struggle. Katia says, however, "She and my grandfather used to tell me that the war was one of the best periods of their lives. We were like, `What are you saying?' And she said, `Well, yes, because it brought out the best qualities in everybody.'" It is estimated that there were 50,000 Allied former POWs loose in Italy by the end of 1943, and despite the warnings from Hitler himself that Italians giving aid to them would be punished under martial law, the Origos carried on for years helping them with food, clothing, shelter, and advice, quite literally risking their lives and the lives of everyone on the estate by doing so. Iris documents much of this in the diary, writing each day's entry on paper which she subsequently put into a tin container and buried in the garden for fear that the Germans would read it and learn of her activities. Antonio spoke German and led them to believe that the Origos were on their side, all the while giving aid to Allied partisans, deserters from the Italian Army who did not wish to fight on the side of the Fascists, and to escaped prisoners of war. That latter group included my father.