Saba's Christian father, 29-year-old Ugo Edoardo Poli, converted to Judaism in order to marry 37-year-old Felicita Rachele Cohen in July 1882. Felicita was one month pregnant with Umberto at the time of the wedding. Ugo abandoned his new wife and faith before Umberto was born and the child was raised first by a Slovene Catholic wet-nurse, Gioseffa Gabrovich Schobar ("Peppa"), and her husband, who had just lost a child, and from 1887 onwards by his mother, in her sister Regina's home, though Umberto maintained a close lifelong attachment to Peppa. (p. 528)