The orphans program and the children diaspora. From contemporary media interest to present deafening silence

After the end of the Second World War – and up to the Seventies – about 3,700 Italian children emigrated to the United States to be adopted by American couples; Catholic, non-confessional and independent Agencies were involved in this “orphans program”. This operation of "forced emigration" was carried out with a certain constancy and regularity and with considerable media coverage, both in Italy and in US. Newspapers and magazines reported the stories of children leaving Italy to begin a new life overseas: an unexpected tool of the Cold War, used in order to demonstrate the good relationship between the two countries. Also, when some issues – or even a scandal, as the "Giambalvo case” (1959) – came to light, the press gave full coverage to the events, able to influence public opinion and rock the political establishment. These events were so well known that even Vittorio De Sica, in 1961, while the flow of children who left Italy was at its peak, told of the less edifying aspects of these stories in The Universal Judgment: it was quite clear that, behind the humanitarianism, a “commercial” side was often minimized or concealed. As the years passed, as these children grew up and integrated into the American culture and society, media progressively stopped talking about them and their stories. Italy soon passed from being a poor country that "exported" children to a country where the demand for little "orphans", coming from the most disadvantaged areas of the globe, was constantly rising. The reasons for this sort of historical amnesia are certainly numerous, first of all a strong will to leave behind a difficult period of its past. Nevertheless, those directly involved cannot forget: they are still fighting to obtain the “right to their birth origins”.