ITALY: News from Montana

Rome newspapers last week came up with a horrendous tale of the “bestial treatment” of Italians and Germans in the cruel concentration camps of the U.S. Talebearer was one Armando Tosi, onetime manager of the Italian restaurant at the New York World’s Fair, who said he got his news from some of his underlings who were rounded up as unregistered aliens by the FBI last May.

Describing the reign of terror in the U.S., Signor Tosi told how Axis citizens were jailed with common criminals, herded into concentration camps. Even women, he said, must suffer these outrages, “such is the fear that has gripped the soul of this psychologically childish people [of the U.S.].” Worst of all, the Italians in the camp at Missoula, Mont, are “watched by policemen, the majority of whom are Jews.”

Not policemen but U.S. Border Patrolmen guard the 900-odd Italians who are detained at scenic Missoula because there is no way of deporting them. The detainees (never referred to as prisoners) govern themselves, spend their time reading, listening to the radio, playing games, doing chores for pin money. They are not forced to work. Name of the camp, chosen by the inmates, is “Bella Vista” (see cuts).