World War II had massive affects on everyone in Italy, but the poor and middle classes had it the worst and were on the miserable end of the experience. During the war, all the lower classes were deprived of the important essentials of life; many Jewish people were traumatized enough to not even leave the house to buy food; and the post-war affects took its toll on the survived Jews who were still discriminated, this time by their appearance. Starvation was an enormous complication during World War II. About a year had passed since Ida and Useppe, Ida’s youngest son, took shelter in the dormitory for the homeless. One of the men, Giuseppe Secondo, left for the military with Nino, Ida’s oldest son. Before his departure, he relinquished his property to Ida and Useppe and entrusted the care of his two canaries to another woman, Carulí. A few weeks later, as Carulí was cleaning the cage, she got distracted and left the cage door open. The two canaries, which were born into captivity, never had a chance to fly and when they tried for the first time, both fluttered and fell to their deaths. Carulí swept the tiny birds outside and both …show more content…
Ida and Useppe are still sheltered in the building for the homeless; every family vacated the dormitory, to find another residence they could call their own, except for Ida and Useppe. One night, Ida went out to get her monthly pay from the bank; she didn’t want to leave Useppe alone, especially since she knew about the barbaric things the Nazi’s are doing to children. “It was known that during the roundup of the Jews, the Germans had grabbed children, even babes in their mother’s arms, flinging them into their funereal trucks, like rags into a rubbish pile; and that in certain villages, in reprisal or merely out of drunkenness, they had killed children, crushing them with tanks, or burning them alive, or slamming them against walls” (Morante