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Concetta Benn on the difficulties of being Australian and Italian in relation to defending Australia

Concetta Benn.

Concetta Benn examines the difficulties of being Australian and Italian in relation to defending Australia in War

Created:

unknown

Date Added:

27 March 2009

Source:

source not available

Format:

mov (Quicktime);

File size:

3.2 MB

Length:

01min14sec

Transcript

Benn:

00:06

During the Second World War, my father had a terrible experience. He was a member of the RSL, he’d been naturalised for some time. But the RSL decided to take his membership off him because he was Italian, he was terribly, terribly upset. He tried all sorts of ways of trying to get around that, he even went to a legal person. He was very upset because he felt that he had earned the RSL badge because he was in the First World War, fighting in those days, Italy of course was on the same side as Australia and England and all those people. So, he was very, very upset and that was the biggest thing that happened to our family at the time.

01:04

He got so upset, we had to almost move out of the district, because the local RSL were starting to say nasty things about him.

01:14

End transcript