Food has been a vital factor in the experience of Italian immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century as well as the American-born generations of their children and grandchildren. Food provided them with a widely shared means of cultural identification, social cohesion, and economic opportunities.

776 Italian children under the age of 14 were deported to Auschwitz. Only 25 survived the gas chambers. Luigi Ferri was one of them.
As the child of mixed marriage he could have avoided deportation, but he refused to abandon his beloved Jewish grandmother when she was arrested in June 1944 in Trieste.