Lorenza Mazzetti

Lorenza Mazzetti is an Italian film director, novelist and painter.

However, since she is writing out of an inner need and not for a professional reason, she resists the definition of a writer. She wants to connect with young people and remind them of the tragedy that she was a testimony of as a child: the Nazi murder of her adopted family, the family of Robert Einstein.

Mazzetti’s mother, Olga Liberati, died shortly after giving birth to the twins Lorenza und Paola. Her father, Corrado Mazzetti, gave custody of his children to a wet nurse in the village Anticoli Corrado, where they spent the first three years of their life. When Corrado Mazzetti realised that the nurse was taking advantage of his absence and leaving the children alone while he was out at work, his friend Ugo Giannattasio, a futurist painter, offered to take care of them in his family.

Some time later the twins moved to live with their paternal aunt. Corrado’s sister Cesarina (Nina) Mazzetti took the twins into her home, a farm in Rignano sull’Arno, where she lived with her husband Robert Einstein (a cousin of Albert Einstein) and their two daughters Annamaria und Luce. Here Lorenza and Paola become part of the family and lived happy and untroubled.

During the Second World War, the farm home was occupied by a department of the Wehrmacht. With the advancement of the allies, after the last motor truck had just vanished and the English army was attacking behind the hills with cannons and rifles, three German officers (who related themselves to the Erfassung Göring) stepped into the villa and asked for Robert Einstein. Nina, quick witted, answered that he was not at home. The officers announced that they would return shortly. Assuming that the only person in danger would be her husband, Nina begged him to hide in the woods. However, when the officers returned on August 3, 1944 and did not find Robert Einstein, they assassinated his family. This incident is known as the Strage di Rignano.

Lorenza and Paola Mazzetti escaped the massacre because of their different surname. The officers had specifically homed in on the name ‘Einstein’. But their lives had become tainted forever by the atrocious execution of their aunt and their cousins. After the carnage they were carried away along with the farmers who had been in the cellars to protect themselves from the bombing of the English army. The farm villa was set on fire. Robert Einstein, who had hidden in the woods, was overwhelmed by pain and committed suicide on 13 July 1945. Lorenza and Paola were entrusted to a custodian that their uncle had authorised with the administration of his estate that he had passed on to them. 

After her diploma, and determined to bury the terrible memory in her unconscious, Lorenza left Italy for London. There she received a message from her sister Paola that their custodian had squandered their whole wealth and had left the sisters penniless. In order to be able to stay in London, Lorenza took a job as a chambermaid in an eatery at Charing Cross.

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Wikipedia