Blogger Phyllis Macchioni has written about the Trains of Happiness.

She speaks of having discovered a book by Giovanni Rinaldi called I Treni della Felicità about the thousands of Southern Italian children who were taken in by Northern Italian families after WWII because of the poverty and debris in southern Italy.

Teresa Noce was the initiator of the program. She had been in a concentration camp in Germany and back home in Milan she became concerned about children who were abandoned and hungry.

Macchioni writes:

“In the two winters following the end of the war, thousands of children left their homes in the war torn Southern provinces to stay with families in and around Modena. They were clothed, sent to school and cared for…”

An estimated 70,000 children were part of the ‘trains of happiness’ program.

Image from here: https://giorinaldi.com/2021/05/27/the-train-of-happiness-dal-blog-di-phyllis-macchioni/