A British soldier remembers Trieste in 1946

[babatriestina]

Te be more exact, the Naafi in your picture is not where it's written the number 2, but the preceding building, being before Via Rismondo , and not after ( I passed this evening by car there )

[refolo]

So do I!
very cautious, like you, (I explain the number 1-2) I have promissed to Beta not to prolong certain discussion, but your answer dose shown that you need Google and books, Maria was there.
I will tell you a bit more that what I should.

number 1 tram terminal it was the Naffi Effi, I told you before. At the very end of Via xxx Ottobre.
I do remember the Coroneo building, the 13th Division of New Zealander talking with the last few Germans inside.
Someone did post the photo in T-Mia....I think it was you.

number 2 Building, for the Americans coming out each morning for review of the uniforms. Marching from, to the Synagoge in Via San Francesco, which it was the largest place to do the so called review.
(I nominated them to give you an idea that the Naffi Effi wasn't there).

So many times I had to escuse myself with my teacher because of that, until they move away to another section. The street was closed for 1/2 hour almost every day.
If the building had another name? sorry I don't know nothing about nothing.

I have the photo of Globocnick and Rainer inside the Rytmayer hotel.
He; Globocnick was called the Scarlett Pinpernel (name give him by the British intelligents, a special Elite- in Trieste during the occupation of the Germans ) pretending to be in Trieste, but he was some where else.

The majority of building for Germans(Anyhow, few of them at the front and back of the Court House,) was in Via Fabio Severo just opposite
the infamous gallery a place of interrogation, and after hang at the hotel.
That place, after the war, a deposit for the Richard-Ginori cristalls......which regardless the religion of the owner, he ask Monsignor Santin to consacrate the gallery, in the presence of high dignitary.


Maria aka Refolo

[Ron]

Hi everyone

I am most impressed with all the results you have supplied so far, I truly am very grateful.

While I have your attention I've got a few more queries for you

Question 1:
On Pages 75 & 76 of my album there are postcards of what was then known as the Stazione Marittima and I knew as the Marittima Ballrom. This is where we held our Passover service and where I saw Carnera fight.
I cannot see it identified on a modern map of Trieste, is it still there?

Question 2:
On page 47 of my album there are photos of one of the frequent demonstrations. Could you identify the main road you can see, was it Via Carducci ?

If you are curious as to why I am asking all these funny questions the answer is quite simple. Some time next year, g-d willing, my wife and I hope to visit Trieste on a short visit and I would like to re-trace my steps of sixty years ago.

I apologise if I am taking up too much space on the site....when I get to be a pain don't hesitate to tell me to shut up

Ciau

Ron

[babatriestina]

Question 1:
On Pages 75 & 76 of my album there are postcards of what was then known as the Stazione Marittima and I knew as the Marittima Ballrom. This is where we held our Passover service and where I saw Carnera fight.
I cannot see it identified on a modern map of Trieste, is it still there?

Question 2:
On page 47 of my album there are photos of one of the frequent demonstrations. Could you identify the main road you can see, was it Via Carducci ?

. Some time next year, g-d willing, my wife and I hope to visit Trieste on a short visit and I would like to re-trace my steps of sixty years ago.

The Stazione Marittima is still there, unchanged in the exterior. But the interiors are very different now, I think that your ballroom exists no more, because it hosts a recentely new congress center. They have pulled down the little building in front, at the end of the Sixtie's.
The demontration on page 67 ( not 47) are, as you rigthly say, at the end if Via Carducci, where it's called Piazza Dalmazia. It is unaltered, I'd say.

Let us know of your visit to Trieste , so we can have a drink together. I hope.

[refolo]

Stazione Marittima is there, in Riva Mandracchio! few things has changed since.
Your passoever was held in there, like I have told you before the Synagoge was in a mess, later after your departure, the Stazione was converted for the Americans Navy, and the facility of food for the younger one, and displaying items of food, which for us children it was Paradise.

what else we did? .....sewing, shoes repairing ect. for the American troops.
Streets, Roads, Piazza ect. get a nice map from a free (GOSH AS USUAL GOOGLE), and you can get an idears of the city of Trieste.

It's like the Middle east, When I was young it was Persia, now is The Iran
and so on!
Everything you have encounter in that particular time it was a s I have said above in a mess.

What the Allied did in the first few months wasn't bad but still a chaos, you can't organize a city of almost 230.000 people in a few days, the subdivision was done in a logical point of view, but with the English system
we didn't understand very much.

The orders from your English department was changed, because of the lucl
of driving systems. Everything has to be in the right side of the road, not the other way around.
Few of your company were P..........off, but law is a law and you did ablige to the Italian system . Engaged a lots of drivers and still driving on the right side of the road.

The Americans arrived at the beging of 1947, and that was the exchange programs as far as the conventions concerned.
They stay until 1952, the second lots arrived in Jannuary 1952 and allowed the first of them to rush to Korea.

Good to remeber dear Ron but hard to forget.

Maria aka refgolo

[PeterG]

Here's that man again! http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stor ... 8267.shtml

Aside from Ron you may find the background of interest, a view of Trieste just months after the war.

P.S. The story's not bad either

[macondo]

relating to the kleine berlin, to my knowledge it's nearly in the zone I did selected in gray ... I'm not an expert on this topic, but I can recall to be in a guided tour into some of the galleries, and they are some street away from via coroneo ...

The so-called Kleine Berlin wasn't limited to the underground complex. Actually all the area within via Coroneo, Via Fabio Severo and Piazza Oberdan was informally baptized in that way. It also included the Sinagogue in via San Francesco and Palazzo Rittmayer in via Ghega...
Basically, all the buildings where the German were operating from during the 2 years of the occupation.
The name was given by the same Germans and with a hint of irony

Very roughly like below:

[macondo]

Question 1:
On Pages 75 & 76 of my album there are postcards of what was then known as the Stazione Marittima and I knew as the Marittima Ballrom. This is where we held our Passover service and where I saw Carnera fight.
I cannot see it identified on a modern map of Trieste, is it still there?

Ron

For some reason we don't have any photo of the Stazione Marittima in our Forum

Hence I borrowed a postcard from our friend misterkappa hoping he doesn't mind. The picture should be more or less from the years you were in Trieste...

[macondo]

Question 2:
On page 47 of my album there are photos of one of the frequent demonstrations. Could you identify the main road you can see, was it Via Carducci ?

Ron

I believe you mean page 67. The immediate foreground is Piazza Dalmazia, followed by Piazza Oberdan (Opicina tram terminus on the right handside) and finally Via Carducci in the background, It seems that the picture has been taken from a window of the Palazzo Rittmayer that I have mentioned a few posts ago in this very same thread (with a contemporary photo).

I have a postcard of these years with a very similar view:

[PeterG]

Macondo

That is very interesting, seeing a ship docked close to the station in Trieste. That would have been where the great Lloyd-Triestino liners docked before the war.

I sailed on a Lloyd-Triestino ship, the Cont Rosso, from Lisbon to Messina in June 1940. Unfortunately it was torpedoed and sank with great loss of life in May 1941.

http://www.misterkappa.it/cpu-lt01.html

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conte_Rosso

[ffdt]

[...]Aside from Ron you may find the background[...]

I noticed a little mistake on the notice under the photo: the tunnel is named Sandrinelli and Goldoni is the name of the square we can see in the background

[...]The so-called Kleine Berlin wasn't limited to the underground complex[...]

thank you Macondo I was thinking that only the galleries was named that way


ciau

franco

[refolo]

To; PG........

From 1947 up to the last days of the troops either English or Americans, Maria and mother where there delivering washing and ironing. I was admiring the sistem of food diplayed, and Opposite the station it was another building EXCELSIOR, for the English soldiers. Distributing bags of flour for the people of Trieste. And supply fuel for your trucks.

I wouldn't have though of this, that, The Marittima Station so dear to me, was the last thing that I saw, before i departure from my city.

Maria aka refolo

[Ron]

Another mystery for you to solve

Dear friends

If I can trouble you to go to my main Army Album ( that's the stories I've posted at: http://rongoldsteinsarmyalbum.blogspot.com/)
then you will see that in the article entitled "Trieste, October 1945 to January 1947" I write about the YMCA.

Just in case some of you may not know the organisation it was the Young Mens Christian Association but in actual fact it always supplied help to all denominations and, like the Salvation Army was most appreciated by all service men & women.

I write "The YMCA in Trieste had taken over a leisure centre which offered, amongst other facilities, a chance to have one's laundry done. On Friday evenings my friends and I would come into town and make straight for the YMCA. Here we would have a shower, a haircut, change our Khaki Drill uniform for a clean set left the week before, and then, all spick and span, we would head for one of the best restaurants in town.

We would go right through the menu, including wines with each course, followed by brandy and cigars. But the best part was yet to come. Instead of paying cash for these blessings we would each sell a tin of 50 cigarettes to the waiter and the cash received was more than sufficient to pay for the whole evening's entertainment, including the earlier visit to the YM! Strictly speaking, of course, the authorities would not have approved of our using army issue cigarettes for this purpose, but the result was that after our evening out we used to glow all the way back to camp. "

The query is "Where was the YMCA situated ?"

I have looked at the map and tried to visualise our route after alighting at the Tram Terminal and one possible road was Viale 20 Septembre.
I would also very much like to know where the restaurant was. I vaguely rememember that its name included the word "antica" and I found a Trieste restuarant with a similar name but it was nowhere near the right area.

Any thoughts on the subject please?

Ciau

Ron

[Nona Picia]

Caro Ron,
io nonparlo l'inglese, scusa se scrivo in italiano. Volevo chiederti a che feste ccattoliche possono corrispondere Hoshà Ana Rabbà, Sheminì Azereth e Simchath Torà. Ciao ciao e grazie

[Ron]

Caro Ron,
io nonparlo l'inglese, scusa se scrivo in italiano. Volevo chiederti a che feste ccattoliche possono corrispondere Hoshà Ana Rabbà, Sheminì Azereth e Simchath Torà. Ciao ciao e grazie

Caro Nona

Hoshà Ana Rabbà is on the 13th October this year
Sheminì Azereth is on the 14th October this year
Simchath Torà is on the 15th October this year

La mia scrittura italiana è terribile in modo da ho chiesto al mio ver al buon amico Peter di aiutarlo e questo è che cosa lo ha raccomandato di scrivere

"Queste son tutte feste mobili, per esempio Hosha'ana Rabbah è l'ultimo giorno dei sette giorni di celebrazione di Sukkos, la Festa delle Capanne. Per le date e spiegazione di queste feste sarebbe forse meglio andar qua http://www.ucei.it/evidenze/calendario/lunario.asp Non ci sono feste cristiane che son comparabile con queste tre, che io sappia”

Spero che questo sia di un certo aiuto

Ciau

Ron

[macondo]

Another mystery for you to solve

The query is "Where was the YMCA situated ?"

I have looked at the map and tried to visualise our route after alighting at the Tram Terminal and one possible road was Viale 20 Septembre.
I would also very much like to know where the restaurant was. I vaguely rememember that its name included the word "antica" and I found a Trieste restuarant with a similar name but it was nowhere near the right area.

Any thoughts on the subject please?

Ciau

Ron

Ron

The mistery is going to be a hard one to unravel....

Was the "*****antica" restaurant near the YMCA premises?

[Ron]

Mac

Yes, for sure, as I remember all our ports of call were close to each other and certainly within walking distance

Ron

[PeterG]

Mac

I think he means staggering distance

[babatriestina]

Antica Bonavia? ( i'm only guessing)

[Ron]

Baba

Antica Bonavia? ( i'm only guessing)

Possible, but this one might have to wait until I get to Trieste next year

Thanks

Ron