Free Republic

“In our rules, nobody can sell anything with ‘The Godfather’ or mobsters or anything that denigrates Italians,” John Fratta, a member of the committee that runs the iconic Little Italy festival, held from Sept. 15 to 25, told The Post. “We don’t need people thinking that the mob is running the feast.” The 2016 decree was added to its vendor rules — and store owners in the area were told that if they want to still peddle the items, they must only be sold inside their shops. “It’s gone. We don’t want that crap there,” he said of the mob-orabilia.

Albert Darago had never fired a bazooka before. He was an “ack-ack” guy, a fuse-cutter on a 90mm antiaircraft gun. But on Dec. 19, 1944, the brass was looking for volunteers to go after some German tanks. And Darago said sure. He was a 19-year-old, color-blind draftee, a native of Baltimore’s Little Italy and a musician who played piano and clarinet. He was no hero, he said. But when Adolf Hitler launched the massive attack that began World War II’s bloody Battle of the Bulge, he had not reckoned on GIs like Darago.

A piece of New York City history is bidding arrivederci. Rising rents and changing demographics have driven Little Italy to the verge of extinction. Once a teeming neighborhood stretching 50 square blocks, it now barely covers three blocks of Mulberry Street—and even that strip is under threat. “You can’t rebuild Little Italy,” said Robert Ianniello Jr., owner of the famed Umbertos Clam House. “If we go away, it will never be here again. You can’t build an Olive Garden and say it’s Little Italy.” …