Smithtown exhibit honors determination of early San Remo resident and Holocaust survivor

Thomas Gugliotta's eyes welled on a recent morning as he recalled the reason his father, Biase, would walk 6 miles from San Remo, a small hamlet in Kings Park, to pay taxes at Smithtown Town Hall.

“In those days, he was a laborer, and he worked bricklaying masonry, and money was tight,” Gugliotta said before a town hall exhibit featuring a photo of his late father and the tax bills he paid decades earlier. “He couldn’t afford a car. He had children to feed. Walking was part of the sacrifice he made to give us a better life.”

The tax records of Biase Gugliotta, who faced harrowing beginnings in a Nazi labor camp in Mecklenburg, Germany, are part of a new display near the tax receiver’s office.

The exhibit, town officials hope, will remind residents of the great "American dream" that laid the foundation for Smithtown's suburban development in the 1950s and '60s. Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim said he expects the display will not only honor Gugliotta's story but also touch town residents.

Wehrheim called the new exhibit "an inspiration to our community about the power of perseverance in the pursuit of the American dream."

Early days of San Remo

Thomas Gugliotta, who lives in the San Remo house he grew up in, shared his father’s story with Doreen Perrino, the executive director of the town’s senior center. Gugliotta said he wanted to donate the documents to the town.

“Things get lost when you pass away, and they may not mean the same thing to somebody else,” Gugliotta said. “And I thought to myself, ‘How many tax records from 1956 are intact and in such good condition?’ So I knew it was special.”

Wehrheim said Gugliotta’s story was emblematic of San Remo’s early days, when the hamlet was largely a community of bungalows. The tax records Gugliotta donated from his father spanned from 1956 to 1964. A yellow-colored framed paper bill from December 1958 showed dues of $86.05. One well-preserved paper bill from 1963-64 — white with black typewriter font and red letters — is also framed.

Biase Gugliotta was freed when U.S. troops liberated the camp in 1945. Gugliotta and his family emigrated to the United States in 1956, eventually arriving in the San Remo section of Smithtown. Gugliotta worked as a bricklayer and mason. He became a U.S. citizen in 1969 and was hired as a custodian at Kings Park High School in 1971, where he worked for 15 years until retiring in 1986, his son said.

“Back then, it was all people like Thomas’ dad, immigrants and working class people who came here,” Wehrheim said.

Ads for San Remo were placed in local Italian language newspapers in the 1950s, making the community a draw for Italian American immigrants, said Richard Smith, the town historian and mayor of Nissequogue Village.

"It was really marketed to Italian Americans in the city and in Brooklyn to come out and enjoy country living," Smith said. "But after the end of World War II, more and more people began to move out and winterize these summer cottages and live there year-round."

'What trouble is'

Biase Gugliotta, who served in the Italian Allied Forces during World War II, almost never made it to the United States, his son said. German forces captured Biase in 1943 and forced him to work in a Nazi camp in Mecklenburg, Germany, Thomas Gugliotta said.

While Biase was in captivity, he and other prisoners were fed food scraps left over from Nazi military officers’ meals, his son said. Biase recounted to Thomas a near brush with death, the son recalled. One morning, when one of his bunkmates was sick with influenza and could not get out of bed to work, a Nazi officer fatally shot the man in the head in front of Biase, Thomas said. Moments later, Biase found himself staring down the barrel of the same rifle.

"One thing he would always tell us kids was: 'You don’t know what trouble is.’ He raised us to appreciate how we were in America and how lucky we were to be here,” Thomas Gugliotta recalled.

Born in Calvera, a small mountain village in the province of Potenza, Italy in 1922, Gugliotta worked as a farmer and met his future wife, Philomena Buglione, while growing up there.

Biase Gugliotta died in 2006 at 84; Philomena Gugliotta died in 1985 at 63.

Gugliotta hopes his father’s story helps people dealing with adversity.

“I hope it serves as an inspiration to people, and it serves as a testament to his will, that he was willing to walk to pay his taxes,” Gugliotta said. “I want his story to be told for generations to come long after I’m gone and can no longer tell it.”