The internment and restrictions placed on 600,000 Italian Americans during WWII,
sparked an interest in Italian POWs transported to and confined in the USA 
during WW II, which resulted in the documentary film "Prisoners in Paradise",
which will be showing during March, in selected cities.

[For more information about the film, contact the filmmaker: Camilla 
Calamandrei at << ItalianPOW@aol.com >>]

The posting of that information prompted Rod Saunders, an English-American
to respond with an interesting Experience of Italian POWs confined on the 
Orkney Islands, (located between the northern tip of Scotland, and the 
Shetland Islands), home to Scapa Flow, British Naval Base, a sheltered open 
lagoon, encircled by the Orkney islands,one of Britain's most historic 
stretches of water, and the site of the "scuttling" of 74 German interred 
warships, at the end of WWI. [The 3 remaining ships (all others were 
salvaged) provide a now world famous dive site, that operates 10+ dive 
charters.]

The Italian Chapel is now one of the most-visited monuments in Orkney.

The "Nissen Huts", I believe are what some of us in the US call "Quonset 
Huts", semi circle frames, covered with sheets of corrugated metal.  
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Mr. Saunders sets the stage for "The Miracle of Camp 60"--"Orkney's Italian 
Chapel":

"The Churchill Barriers" referred to below were built by Italian POWs. "Scapa 
Flow" became heavily defended with anti-aircraft batteries, minefields and 
further blockships. In 1940, Winston Churchill gave orders that the defences 
on the eastern side of Scapa Flow were to be improved by setting concrete 
blocks between islands to make causeways. These four causeways are known as 
the Churchill Barriers.
"Italian POWs were used to build the barriers. They were unhappy, declaring 
this to be war work, and thus against the Geneva Convention, but were 
persuaded that the primary purpose of the barriers was to provide an easy 
means of communication by road for the people living in the south parishes." 

They left a more beautiful reminder of their presence.
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ORKNEY'S ITALIAN CHAPEL 

This chapel, "The Miracle of Camp 60", together with the statue of St. George 
and the Dragon is all that now remains of Camp 60, or indeed any of the other 
construction sites of the Churchill Barriers. The Italian Prisoners of War of 
Camp 60, who arrived in January 1942 to help build the Churchill Barriers, 
left behind an unusual memorial to the war - the Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm. 
  
To brighten up the cheerless camp of Nissen huts the Italians made paths with 
the one thing they had in abundance - concrete - and planted flowerbeds. 
Domenico Chiocchetti made the statue from barbed wire and cement, to preside 
over the camp square. In 1943 a long Nissen hut was provided and Chiocchetti 
set to work, aided by a small number of other POWs. One end was to be the 
Chapel, the other a school.

The corrugated iron was lined with plasterboard and an altar with altar-rail 
cast in concrete. Chiocchetti painted the Madonna and Child behind the altar. 
He also frescoed a White Dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit, at the centre 
of the vault and included the symbols of the four Evangelists around it, as 
well as two Cherubim and two Seraphim lower down, all from a picture on a 
card he kept throughout the war. 
This was so successful that more plasterboard and artistic help was procured 
and the whole of the hut was lined and then painted to appear like brick, 
while the bottom part was painted to look like carved marble. The painted 
vaults in the ceiling are especially well executed. 
  
Palumbo, a metalworker, made candelabra and the rood-screen and gates. After 
all this work the outside seemed mean and so a concrete facade was erected 
with the help of Bruttapasta, with an archway and pillars. A belfry was 
mounted on top and a moulded head of Christ was placed on the front of the 
arch. The whole exterior of the hut was then covered with a thick coat of 
cement - never in short supply during the building of the Barriers! 
 
Mr. Chiocchetti returned to Orkney in 1960 and did much to restore the 
internal paint-work of the chapel, and in 1961 his home town, Moena, near 
Bolzano in the Dolomites, gifted a wayside shrine, a carved figure of Christ 
erected outside the Chapel, to the people of Orkney. More recently much 
exterior work has been done to restore and preserve the Chapel and the 
memorial statue for the future. 

The Italian Chapel is now one of the most-visited monuments in Orkney and is 
a fitting memorial to those lost in wartime. Orkney's historical sites span 
nearly 6,000 years from the First Settlers to the present and the Chapel 
provides a sharp contrast to the older sites. Signor Chiocchetti, in 
addressing the Orcadian people, said, "The chapel is yours, to love and 
preserve". 
  
In recent years several of the ex-prisoners and their families have returned 
to visit their chapel. In 1995, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 
opening of the Barriers, a group returned and a reception was held in their 
honour by Orkney Islands Council. Hopefully this connection between Italy and 
Orkney will endure long after memories of World War II have faded.
 
It is somewhat ironic that most of the many visitors to Orkney cross the 
Churchill Barriers. They come not to remember the English war leader, or to 
marvel at military engineering, but to visit our little Italian shrine which 
is a monument to hope and faith in exile.