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A Christmas fairy tale comes true: in 1944, US soldier Martin Adler had himself photographed with these three children.
Now he has finally found her.
They are the Italian siblings Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi (from left to right).
They are now 83, 79 and 82 years old and live in Castel San Pietro Terme, a municipality southeast of Bologna.
Photo: Matteo Incerti / AFP
Early autumn 1944: A US soldier named Martin Adler and his comrade John Bronsky enter a house in the small village of Monterenzio south of Bologna.
In search of fleeing Wehrmacht soldiers, he discovers a large wicker basket that is making strange noises.
Adler fears a German ambush.
The young GI, a member of the 339th Infantry Regiment, was already aiming the machine gun at the basket when a woman ran in front of the muzzle.
"Bambini, bambini," she shouts desperately, "children, children".
Adler approaches the basket when its lid is lifted - and three children, two girls and a boy, get out.
The two GI's burst out laughing, offering the children chocolate and asking their mother's permission to photograph the children.
Soldier Adler, then just 20 years old, laughs at the camera with relief.
The three children, hastily stuffed into their most beautiful Sunday robes by their mother, look a little skeptical.
The shock will still have stuck in their limbs.
This is how a photo was taken in September or October 1944 that the US soldier Martin Adler never let go for 76 years.
Because it represented a moment of happiness.
A tiny bit of humanity in the midst of the horrors of war around him.
"It was the best moment in this hell called war," Adler told the Italian news agency Ansa.
Daughter posts photo from 1944 to cheer up father
More than three quarters of a century after the end of World War II, a dream has now come true for Martin Adler: the son of Hungarian Jews finally knows the children shown in the photo from 1944: they are the siblings Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana Naldi.
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In search of the three children: Italian journalist and author Matteo Incerti (center) helped US veteran Martin Adler to find the three little Italians from the photo.
Incerti poses here with the Naldi siblings Bruno, Mafalda and Giuliana.
Photo: Matteo Incerti / AFP
The three "Bambini" of yore are now 83, 79 and 82 years old and live in Castel San Pietro Terme, a community south-east of Bologna - just 30 kilometers from Monterenzio, where the US soldier ran into the gun in 1944 .
The children were tracked down thanks to the initiative of Adler's daughter, Rachel Adler Donley.
"I wanted to cheer him up a little," Adler Donley told the New York Times.
The Corona year was very hard for her father, who lives with his wife Elaine, 89, in a senior citizen facility in Florida.
So Adler Donley posted the World War II photo on various platforms.
It was there that the Italian journalist and author Matteo Incerti discovered it.
"It would be a Christmas fairy tale"
Incerti researched and brought local journalists on board, and the Italian news program TG1 broadcast an appeal.
"It would be a Christmas fairy tale to find the children of yore", Martin Adler is quoted in an article in the Italian daily newspaper "La Repubblicca".
It was Bruno Naldi who was the first to recognize himself in the photo.
According to the Ansa news agency, he remembered US soldiers who teased him and his siblings and gave them sweets.
Bruno spoke to a friend whose supervisor turned to Incerti.
Who, in turn, got in touch with Adler to convey the good news to him.
But not only the "Christmas fairy tale" came true.
The four seniors even met again - even if only virtually: On December 15, 2020, Martin Adler and the Naldi siblings met in a video conference.
Adler in his retirement home in Florida, the three Naldis in their Italian homeland.
A little helpless and very moved, the siblings fiddled with their smartphones in the park, as a video circulating on the internet shows.
According to Ansa, Adler's first words were the same as in 1944 as soon as the connection was established: “Ciao bambini.
Vuoi cioccolata? "-" Hello children, do you want chocolate? "
Despite their old age, the three Naldi siblings, as well as ex-GI Adler, are in good health.
Her savior of yore, Mamma Rosa, however, is no longer alive.
The woman who threw herself in front of Adler's rifle 76 years ago with the words "Bambini, bambini" died in 2000.
She is "the true heroine of history," says Adler of the New York Times.
“She ventured in front of the gun, I didn't.
I just held her, ”said Adler, who was injured in November 1944 and had been hospitalized.
In the spring of 1945 he took part in the liberation of Italy from Nazi occupation, after which he returned to his homeland.
When the pandemic is over, the 96-year-old American plans to fly to Italy and visit the three Naldi siblings in Italy.
To hug her this time without a cumbersome video conference.
Really, really.
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