A Lost Childhood

For seven idyllic years, Santina lived with her family on the sun-bathed coast of North Africa in the Italian Colony of Lybia. Until the Fascist fanaticism of Mussolini's Regime reached out with a subterfuge beyond belief. On the pretext of a three month holiday in the "Motherland" for those children born in North Africa, families were persuaded to allow their children to go to Italy. So it was Santina and her three siblings set off on their Italian "holiday." On arrival in Italy it soon became clear this was no holiday. Girls and boys were seperated and so began a story of despair and deprivation in the name of Fascism, and a mother's struggle to find her children in a country miles from home and ravaged by war.