“Dedicated to all Italians and Italians who came to Switzerland to work and live”.
Thus opens "The long goodbye - Der lange Abschied", the photographic volume on Italian emigration to Switzerland after the war.
That of Italian immigration to Switzerland is a story with often painful implications, a story often with a happy ending but which passes through black pages that speak of xenophobia, oppressive laws, humiliation and rejection.
“I don't hesitate to also use the word shame for the difficulties that foreigners were often subjected to in Switzerland,” says Bachmann. Between 1950 and 1970, between 3 and 4 million Italians emigrated to Switzerland: they came from the deep south but also from central Italy and many from Veneto and Friuli.
The images document their destiny, accompany them on their life-changing journey, from the place of origin to the place of arrival: from cardboard suitcases tied with string, to the endless waiting on the station platforms or for a medical examination. And after a lot of work, integration is finally slow but inexorable. From trade union movements to moments of celebration, first communions, singing competitions, football matches. And finally the return to Italy, the new home and furniture, well-being.
A long goodbye before, a long goodbye later: in both the sad nostalgia for separation, for departures.
__
Catalogue of the exhibition 15.05. 11.07.2003 at Istituto Italiano di Roma