Episode one: Travelling in Europe 60 years ago. Some years ago I found among my father’s documents an old passport issued in the fifties by the High Commission for Occupied Germany. Several pages of this passport are filled with entry and exit stamps from Luxembourg, Belgium, The Netherlands and the UK. All these stamps were made in a timeframe of one week. I remember my father telling me about his business travel to the UK along with a Delegation of the DGB (the Confederation of German Trade Unions). Among other things, he told me how complicated it was to cross borders after the war. At each border all the people had to step off the train with their luggage to pass through customs and baggage inspection.

Episode two: The horde. Few years ago, the Italian columnist of the daily Corriere della Sera Gian Antonio Stella published a website as a compendium of his book “L’Orda” (“The Horde”). The book is focused on Italian emigration in the past. Among several other documents, the website contains some photographs dating back to the fifties showing how Italian emigrants risked their lives trying ...