The deportation

The article by Tonio Borg about the deportation of a number of Maltese with Italian sympathies (February 12) reminded me of a vague recollection of that event.

At that time, we used to live in a cul de sac, Strada Prima (now Trejqa l-Imħazen). On the other side of the road lived an Italian family, named Midolo. The man was a bespoke tailor. In that corner of Floriana all the residents were like a single family.

I remember one evening, when it was already dark, there was a commotion in the normally very quiet street and we went out to find out what was happening.

Composite photo showing men who were interned without a trial and sent to concentration camps in Uganda. Images: National Archives of Malta

There was a group of persons in front of the Midolo house. My father asked one of the group if he could be of any help but was advised not to interfere or meddle and was told to go back inside and lock his door. Eventually, we learnt that Midolo was picked up, together with many others, and taken into isolation in Rabat.

Midolo was not our only acquaintance who had been collected. Another family used to live in the large house that now is the seat of the Floriana Civic Council. I cannot remember their names. As my father had good business connections with Italy, he was very worried but eventually we never faced any problems.

There was another side to that event. The families of the internees were allowed to reside in Malta but many could not afford to pay the rent and lived in abject poverty throughout the war. Some friends did help them in a limited way but everyone was afraid to be seen having too close a connection. In 1940, I was still a very young boy but such events left an imprint on my memory.

The internees had their personal reasons to favour the Italian regime. One must remember that the Italian culture was prevalent in Malta, especially in certain classes and quarters. Even to this very day, there are those who would prefer to follow the Italian culture and lay aside the British influence. What many of those people did not comprehend was the fact that with Mussolini befriending Hitler, he had become an enemy not only of Britain but of the allies, including the French.

World War II was a complex event. The main question is: would any of the internees have betrayed Malta and passed delicate and important information to the Axis? Many believe that, in their fanaticism, they could very well have done stupid things but this in now all water under the bridge.

I pity those people and their families. They suffered for their idealism but missed the whole picture of alliances during a global war.

Frans Said – St Paul’s Bay

Tonio Borg’s very important article on the 80th anniversary of when the British colonialists literally took the law into their own hands to abuse it, hints in its last parts to the difference which we all need to make between “internati”, “deportati” and “eżiljati”.

Subject to correction, I believe that it is only one of the many books which have been written locally about this subject – besides that written by my former bank colleague Farrugia (first name escapes me) – which insists on the distinction.

Because, perhaps, we often hardly ever speak or write about the many good and honest citizens who – very often on the basis of false reporting by other Maltese – also innocently ended up “internati” in Maltese prisons. I say this also because my late uncle, Adolfo Consiglio, then a highly capable armaments specialist in HM Dockyard, was one of those falsely accused of inexistent wrongdoing by fellow “Christian” Maltese and was interned, with other Maltese workers, in a local military prison.

Perhaps the biggest irony to this story was the fact that, after the war, he ended up marrying in Malta an English lady who had been a BBC announcer in London during the height of the war and bombings there.

John Consiglio – Birkirkara

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