'I had to fight to stay out of Land Army'

It was just around 1900 when Anthony Tartagli and his wife Theresa completed their journey to arrive at their new home at the heart of Scotland's capital.

They left behind the sun-drenched hillsides of Atina, an ancient town once conquered by the Romans, near Cassino, where Anthony had tended sheep, and Theresa worked as a maid.

Together they dreamed that Scotland would offer them and their future children a life that Atina never could.

Today their granddaughter Sylvia is in her late 80s but recalls with pride the determination of her ancestors and with bitterness the fate that would befall them.

For the Tartagli family – like thousands of hardworking Italian immigrants who came here in search of a better life – would find themselves innocent victims of wartime prejudices which helped cost two of them their lives.

As for Sylvia, who watched helplessly as wartime internment destroyed her grandfather and father's health, there would be a personal battle as she railed against the authorities.

Her grandparents arrived with only a few lira in their pockets and made their home in the poverty-stricken Grassmarket.

Starting with an ice-cream cart, they developed a small chain of fish restaurants under the name Tarry's.

"My grandparents managed to raise five children. They were very, very poor when they came here but they gave their children a good education and they worked hard.

"But Mussolini came along, and they became pawns in a game of chess played by politicians."

It was the Italian leader's decision to enter the war on Hitler's side that changed the lives of thousands of innocent immigrant families. Germans and Austrians in Britain were already regarded as "enemy aliens". Now it was the Italians' turn to be rounded up and imprisoned without trial.

Anthony, by then in his 60s, and his eldest son Ralph – Sylvia's Edinburgh-born father who was desperately ill from tuberculosis – were among those to be interned. "My father had TB, my mother looked after him as best she could but he was a dying man," says Sylvia, who ran Little Women boutique in Newington until she retired four years ago at the age of 84. "What threat did he pose to anyone?"

Sylvia's father had met her mother Theresa while on a family holiday home to Atina. It was love at first sight for the Scots-Italian and the young nurse.

Together they ran the thriving Tarry's fish restaurant near the family's Sighthill home, raising a family of four, until illness prevented him from working and Theresa combined caring for him with running the business.

Ralph was already sick when officers arrived to arrest him under internment laws in 1940.

"They sent him to Saughton Prison which initially was OK because it was near and we could visit him," recalls Sylvia. "He was chronically ill, but for some reason they decided to send him to York to stay in disused stables.

"Imagine a man with that illness in a damp atmosphere like an old stables," she sighs. "Of course it was not long before he was sent home to die. He was only 40."

A dreadful fate awaited her grandfather Anthony too. "He was 60 years old but he was sent to the Isle of Man. The police that came to arrest him were in tears. One said, 'Mr Tarry, this is the worst job I have ever had to do'

He was sent to an internment camp but the trauma of the situation shattered his health and he suffered a heart attack.

"He died within seven months," says Sylvia, who lives in Baberton Park, Juniper Green.

Sylvia, then 19, was further enraged by the treatment meted out to her ageing grandmother.

Internment meant wives of "enemy aliens" were expected to move away from cities to the countryside – and her grandmother was sent to Innerleithen and Peebles.

"What for?" asks Sylvia. "These women didn't have guns in the house, they weren't going to commit some terrorist act. They were just ordinary working folk."

Her anger at the injustice of internment meant that when Sylvia was approached to 'do her bit for the war effort' and serve her country, she refused, declaring herself to be a conscientious objector.

It was a stance that led to legal hearings – reported at the time in the Evening News – to establish her grounds for refusal before a Tribunal for Conscientious Objectors led by Lord Elphinstone.

"I'm only 5ft tall and Lord Elphinstone was sitting high up as the presiding judge, but I was determined," she remembers.

"I understood it was wartime and that everything was in upset. But my grandfather died of a broken heart and my desperately ill father was treated very badly.

"They wanted me to go into the Land Army and I thought: 'Why should I?'"

Internment left its mark on every Italian family in Britain, she adds. Her English-born husband Peter De Luca was turned down by the RAF because of his Italian background and sent to the Pioneer Corps – the army unit often dubbed "The King's Most Loyal Enemy Aliens" because its ranks included so many British Italians and European Jews – while his younger brother William – then just 16 and born in Italy – was arrested and interned.

Now as the 70th anniversary of internment approaches, Sylvia believes the time has passed for apologies and memorials.

"What is an apology? Saying sorry doesn't cancel out the heartbreak, it can't turn back time.

"And a memorial won't change what happened.

"War is war," she adds. "It's uncivilised and doesn't do any good at all."