Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, called "Vic" by her friends, is the daughter of Italian-born Gabriella Sestrieri, who was half-Jewish and fled the Mussolini regime in 1941. Trained as an opera singer, she was destitute when she arrived as a refugee immigrant. She met and married Anton "Tony" Warshawski, a Polish American police officer in Chicago. Gabriella spoke Italian and heavily accented English with her daughter, who became fluent in Italian. On the other hand, the American-born Tony spoke only English with her, and she picked up only a few words of Polish from her paternal grandmother.