Before I immigrated to the United States, I lived in Italy with my parents and two sisters, Lucia and Catherine. We had a small shoe store in the countryside of Italy. My parents used to work at the store every day to make money for our family’s living expenses. When my oldest sister Catherine turned 20 years old, she started learning how to make shoes from her parents and helped her parents work at the store. Our parents always told us that, one day, my sister Lucia and I would also be working at the store. 

Unexpected things started happening in our town. People who lived in our town started to move to the city to find work, and there were hardly any people to be found in the town. As the population declined drastically, we rarely saw customers finding our store, and the money we made from selling shoes was not enough to cover our family’s living expenses. As time went on, the situation got worse and our family had to find another job to make money. My mother tried to convince my father to close the store and move to the city to find a new job; however, my father couldn't give up the store he inherited from his grandfather. So while Lucia and Catherine were looking for a place to work, they found a factory called Triangle Waist Factory, a shirtwaist manufacturing company located in New York. The company was looking for young women who were capable of sewing. After thinking for a long time whether to go or not, we decided to move to the United States to work at the factory and our parents decided to stay in Italy. At age of 10, I left for the United States with Lucia and Catherine with airline tickets and a minimum cost of living. Since me and Lucia couldn’t sew, Catherine had to teach us before moving from Italy.

After we arrived in New York, we found a small apartment near the factory to live in. New York was very different from the countryside in Italy. I was very confused and nervous at first. There were so many cars on the street and tall buildings that I had never seen in Italy. The next day, I followed Lucia and Catherine and went to the factory. A guide standing in the main door guided us to the cutting room on the 9th floor. Then he gave us a uniform and guided us to the fitting room. Inside the factory there were about 500 workers. Most of them were young Italian and Jewish immigrant women and some girls were my age. We worked six days a week in the factory, earning about 10 dollars. 

While working in the factory for 4 years, we consistently sent money to our parents so they were able to move their shoe store to the city and continue their business.

On an ordinary day, I was working in the factory as usual. The sky was blue and the weather was nice outside. I was about to finish my work and leave the factory. After finishing my work, I changed into my clothes and waited for Lucia and Catherine to finish their work. Suddenly, people down stairs started screaming that there was a fire. The fire spread rapidly through highly flammable fabrics and papers. People inside the factory panicked and the factory was in complete chaos. Hundreds of workers started running towards the exit all at once. We have never had any kind of fire drill so we didn’t know what to do, the sprinklers weren’t installed inside the building, and the stairways were only about 2and a half feet wide. As the fire grew bigger and bigger people started breaking the windows and tried to jump off the building. The space was filled with smoke so it was very difficult to breathe. Lucia came to find me from the other side of the building. We tried to find Catherine, but finding someone in that situation was impossible. There were too many people in front of the exit and the elevator. So, Lucia and I decided to wait inside the toilet for the firefighters to come to rescue people inside the building. We crouched inside the toilet and started to pray. However, shortly after, we realized that the fire spread to the toilet door. At that moment, all the memories of life in Italy and working in the factory flashed through my mind.