Antonio, from Sicily to Flénu-Belgium

Antonio, from Sicily to Flénu.

Belgium Christel Declève

My name is Antonio. My family lived in Sicily. By the end of World War II, the bombs had destroyed many homes and factories. There was no more work.

Like many Italians, my father agreed to come to Belgium to work in the coal mines. The train journey lasted two days. At that time, only the men left to work.

We joined our father a year and a half later.

The miners lived in tin barracks near the mine and slag heaps. While the men worked, the women took care of the meals, the laundry, the cleaning.

Mining work was hard and dangerous. To work, you had to show your license every day. To protect themselves from the gas, the miners descended into the mine with a canary. If the canary died, we had to leave because there was dangerous gas.

The work was hard and dangerous.

Sometimes you had to crawl to reach the coal. Horses lived in the galleries to pull the carts filled with coal.

I had two brothers and a sister. From the age of six, children went to school and learned French.

The children would play marbles, soccer, sticks and sometimes we would go to the movies.

We played on the slag heaps, we descended the slopes of the slag heap sitting on cardboard boxes or iron plates.

My father died at 45, suffering from silicosis, a lung disease caused by coal dust.

When I was 18, I returned to Italy. I was told that I was a foreigner, that I was Belgian. Thanks to my studies, I became a photographer.

I moved to Flénu.

22