Giulio Picolli brought to the United States the strength and determination of someone who left Italy with little more than a hundred dollars in his pocket and was able to achieve his American dream. Speaking at the microphones of ilNewyorkese on Claudio Brachino’s “Portraits” podcast, Picolli, now president of the New Jersey Association of Knights of the Italian Republic and founder of the Italian Association Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, shared his intense personal and collective experience related to the 9/11 tragedy.
“That day remains indelible in my memory,” Picolli recalled. On the morning of the attack, a phone call from his sister in Italy alerted him to the disaster that was happening: ” Turning on the TV I saw a skyscraper on fire, but initially I did not understand what was happening. Only around 10:30 did we realize that it was a terrorist attack.” Personal anguish was immediately intertwined with collective tragedy: “I immediately thought of Luigi Calvi, my godson, who had been hired three months earlier at Fitzgerald Cantor on the 104th floor of the Towers. I immediately called his father, who was crying in despair. I tried to reach Manhattan with my son, but the police had blocked access. Only late in the evening did we manage to get near the site, but the chaos was total, the streets filled with desperate people.” As for thousands of others, the end was painfully tragic: “Gigi died that day, but the body was not found until November. A huge pain.”
Out of anger at the lack of media attention given to the Italian victims came his mission. Picolli strongly denounced how, initially, it was wrongly reported that there were no Italians among the victims: “It took me five years to collect the names of the Italian-Americans who died that day, they are over 600, not 39 as is often reported.” Out of this research came the book “We Do Not Forget, We Will Never Forget,” a work that collects photographs, stories and testimonies of those who did not survive that dramatic day.
One story that Picolli considers emblematic is that of Angelo Sereno, a young Italian electrician who, seeing firefighters running toward the World Trade Center, did not hesitate to help them. “He voluntarily entered the Towers and never came out again. He is a symbol of the heroism of Italians and Italian-Americans who gave everything that day,” he recounted with emotion.
Even today, so many years later, Picolli testifies how difficult it is for the families of the victims to find peace: “Every year at the commemoration at the Italian consulate, I see in the eyes of the families that the pain has not gone away. Those who lost a son, those who lost a father, see that tragedy again every year. Every year the television images renew the trauma.” His next goal is to collect more stories, images and chronicles of the tragedy in a new book, to leave a complete testimony to future generations. “I am 84 years old and I ask the Lord to give me the strength to complete this other book with the photographs, stories and chronological images, not only of the Italian-American victims, but of the whole tragedy,” concluded Picolli, proud of his Italian identity, proudly brought to America.
The article Giulio Picolli, Italian 9/11 memory and truth in America comes from TheNewyorker.
