“It all started with me,” said Marguerite Graffagnini Maranto. A spry 92-years-young, she spoke in the kitchen of her Hammond, LA home. Her eyes twinkled as she told the story of how she met her husband Mario back in 1944, when she was 17.
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All’s fair in love and war—Italian POWs in New Orleans during World War II
In May of 1943, Allied forces defeated the Italian army in North Africa. 51,000 Italian prisoners-of-war (and about 380,000 Germans) were brought to the US and held on military bases across the country. About 900 of them were brought to Jackson Barracks, just outside New Orleans.
