World War II put lots of children, all over the world, in mortal danger. Those families that could often put them on trains to escape it.

From the Kindertransport of Jewish children from Nazi controlled corners of Europe to the mass evacuations of British kids from the cities to the less-bombed north and rural parts of the country in Operation Pied Piper, with wealthier families sending them as a “Children’s Invasion” of Canada and even the U.S. to get them out of harm’s way, this became a familiar narrative and fact of life during the war years.

“The Children’s Train” tells a far less familiar story, that of the “Happiness Trains” that moved kids from war-torn, impoverished Southern Italy to homes in the wealthier, less fought-over or bombed north. If you’re wondering how you’ve never heard of it, consider that A) it was organized and run by women and B) they were acting under the aegis of the Italian Communist Party.

Director and co-writer Cristina Comencini’s film, based on a novel by Viola Ardone, is a sentimental (fictional) memoir, an adult concert violinist remembering how that evacuation from the South changed his life.

Violinist Amerigo (Stefano Accorsi) gets a phone call backstage before an ’80s concert performance. The call is from his mother. The news it brings is that his mother has died.

That puzzling statement, suggesting two “mothers,” and memories of the melody he’s playing in concert on this night take him back to his emaciated childhood (Christian Servone plays eight year-old Amerigo), pulling a “find me if you can” prank on his birth mother (Serena Rossi) in the middle of a German air raid shortly after the Allies and local partisans liberated the city.

Two years later, she still has one son — the other was killed in an air attack — and a husband allegedly “in America,” and she’s figured out she can’t keep Amerigo fed and clothed. He’s taught himself math, despite being yanked from school, by counting the number of people he passes who, unlike him, can afford shoes.

“Six, eight, ten…”

But there’s an evacuation on offer. And all the shrieking by the gossip-mongers, priests and “penguins” (nuns) about “selling your children to Russia” (in Italian or dubbed into English) where they’ll “be cooked in ovens” or have “their hands cut off” by the Bolsheviks can’t dissuade Antoinetta.

The local communist organizers are women and mothers like themselves. They’re sending a trainload to Modena, in the north. Not to Russia.

The kids are prone to panic and believe the rumors. In 1946 Europe, villains putting children in “ovens” wasn’t as far-fetched as it might seem today.

But whatever actions the occupying Allies and the Italian government might be considering, the communist mothers — and the sexist party leaders who act like they’re in charge — are doing something.

Amerigo and a couple of friends find themselves on such a train, freaking out at any hint that a single one of those rumors might be true (they’re relunctant to hold out their hands to have their transport number marked on them), stripping off donated jackets to toss out the windows to their mothers who will give them to the children left behind with them in Naples.

The kids are suspicious of the odd accents and language used by the northerners, and at the odd food they’re offered. “It’s moldy. POISON!” No, bambinos. That’s mortadella!

Amerigo finds himself in the care of a reluctant single woman. Derna (Barbara Ronchi) fought alongside the partisans, lost a lover in the war and soldiers on with the party’s business as an Apparatchik.

“Politics I know,” she grouses. “Parenting?”

Not her thing, Amerigo decides. But once he’s shed the last of his superstitions about this whole “transport” operation, he finds friends in this farm community, more of that mortadella he’s come to crave and kind words from Derna’s brother in the party (Ivan Zerbinati).

He’s a woodworker who notices the lad’s fascination with the violin.

The film is about the psychological struggle in young kids, thrown into an alien environment, drawn back to the world they know, despite everything it lacks, or determined to stay in their new homes with new families and now mothers for a better life.

Young Servone is quite good, and the character’s two mothers — Ronchi and Rossi — give us a fine contrast between officious and cold but warming-up and earthy and maternal but overwhelmed and losing hope. Any potential this tale has as a weeper rests with them, and a script that directs us to grab our hankies, and isn’t terribly subtle about it.

But if you can’t get sentimental about poor, starving kids and an emotional tug of war between two mamas, then sentiment just isn’t your thing.

This period piece serves up forgotten history and a post-war “fresh” ulititarian take on non-Soviet communism which perhaps only the Italians could manage.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Christian Servone, Barbara Ronchi, Serena Rossi, Ivan Zerbinati and Stefano Accorsi.

Credits: Directed by Cristina Comencini, scripted by Furio Andreotti, Giulia Calenda, Camille Duguay and Cristina Comencini, based on the novel by Viola Ardone. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46