Sopressa: a cured pork sausage similar to salami

Sottoportego: an alley that passes under the second story of a building

Torta: a flourless Italian cake; often made with ground nuts in place of flour

Vaporetto: a Venetian public waterbus

Viale: an avenue or boulevard

Vin brulè: the Italian term for mulled wine; distinct from the French vin brûlé

Zaeti: a Venetian cookie, typically made with cornmeal and raisins and formed in a diamond shape

Zio/Zia: the Italian terms for uncle and aunt

Zoccoli: wooden clogs, usually homemade; often made with a wooden sole and a vamp of leather or canvas

Read On

Suggestions for Further Reading

As a full bibliography would stretch to many pages, I offer instead a brief selection of works for readers who are interested in learning more about the historical backdrop to Our Darkest Night. A few titles are now out of print, but they should be accessible via your local public library or any bookshop that specializes in hard-to-find titles. I have included general histories of the period, specialist works, memoirs and personal accounts, works of fiction, several websites, and one documentary film.

General and specialist histories:

The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944–1945 by Rick Atkinson

The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide by Daniel Blatman

Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees

The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution by Michele Sarfatti

Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism by Alexander Stille

KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann

Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 by Joshua D. Zimmerman

The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival by Susan Zuccotti

Memoirs and first-person accounts:

Beyond Imagination by Victoria Ancona-Vincent

Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi

If This Is a Man (also published as Survival in Auschwitz) by Primo Levi

La memoria rende liberi: La vita interrotta di una bambina nella Shoah by Liliana Segre and Enrico Mentana

This Has Happened by Piera Sonnino

Night by Elie Wiesel

Fiction:

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani

The Tuscan Child by Rhys Bowen

From Sand and Ash by Amy Harmon

A Thread of Grace by Maria Doria Russell

Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan

Websites:

The documentary film Memoria, which features ninety interviews with Italian survivors of the Holocaust, among them Liliana Segre, is posted to the Fondazione CDEC’s YouTube channel. The film is in Italian with English subtitles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_RBlqfvGlk

Also by Jennifer Robson

The Gown

Goodnight from London

Moonlight Over Paris

After the War is Over

Somewhere in France

Fall of Poppies

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