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THE FORGOTTEN TRAGEDY, AUGUST 12, 1944
and ONE OF THE REASONS I WROTE PETRA'S QUEST
It's strange how we remember where we were when a significant event occurs. The JFK assassination and 9/11 come to mind for me, and another—the hint of a story that my Aunt Eva told me as we sat in a waiting room at Queen of the Valley Hospital in Napa, CA. It was May, 1986. Eva didn't have all the facts. Her memory was beginning to fail. But what I remember now is the vision of our family in Tuscany escaping the Waffen-SS during their onslaught of a neighboring village, Sant'Anna. I learned our family, along with other villagers, hid from the Nazis in nearby chestnut tree groves.
Four years later, I heard the story while visiting the same family—cousins—during my stay in Pomezzana (the family village.) One cousin, Umberta, had firsthand knowledge.
Italy's "switch" from the Axis Powers to the Allies in September 1943 prompted the German Army to begin the building of the Gothic Line. There was no "building" per se, but military stations preparing the approach of the Allies as they marched north—after liberating Sicily, Rome, and Florence. The Germans wanted to stop them before they could enter Germany. Knowing they were losing the war, they took on a scorched-earth attitude, burning, killing, assaulting every living being in Italy, including animals.
Part of the Gothic Line was just north of Pomezzana. Suffice it to say there was a large number of Nazis in the area, and because of this, a large number of Italian partisans hiding in the nearby hills. Given the animosity and tension, two of these partisans, filled with uncontrollable anger—and if I translated the story correctly, also filled with too much wine, went on a mission to find and kill Nazi soldiers. Umberta ran into these two partisans and begged them to stop. She didn't care about the Nazis but feared their retaliation.
The partisans ignored Umberta's warning, found three soldiers and shot them. Two died on the spot. One hung on long enough for Umberta to find him.
Again, I can't be sure of my translation but as he lay dying, he told her to be wary of the hills. The part I'm not sure of is what he meant. I think he was warning her that there were more Nazis in the hills. Did he find his humanity in his final breath?
Umberta and her family left their home days later, on foot, beginning their long journey to Lombardia, near the Swiss border—to safety until the end of the war.
The soldiers rounded up villagers, locking up hundreds in several barns and stables, before systematically executing them. The killings were done mostly by shooting groups of people with machine guns or by herding them into basements and other enclosed spaces and tossing in hand grenades.
I cannot bring myself to write what happened to the eight pregnant women.
The corpses were set on fire (the soldiers used pews from the church for a bonfire to dispose of the bodies). The livestock were also exterminated and the whole village was burned down.
The killing of 560 innocent people took three hours, and when done, the SS men sat down outside the burning church and ate lunch.
After the war, the church was rebuilt. The Charnel House Monument and the Historical Museum of Resistance were both built nearby. Stations of the Cross illustrate scenes from the massacre along the trail from the church to the main memorial site—the National Park of Peace, founded in 2000.
Apart from the divisional commander Max Simon, no one was prosecuted for this massacre until July 2004, when a trial of ten former Waffen-SS officers living in Germany was held before a military court in La Spezia, Italy. On June 22, 2005, the court found the accused guilty of participation in the killings and sentenced them in absentia to life imprisonment.
No one was extradited from Germany. No one went to prison. The men were too old.
Anna Pardini was the youngest to have been slaughtered. She was 20 days old. The women above are her sisters. Cesira survived under the body of her fallen mother. She grabbed her sisters, Adele and Lilia and escaped through a cellar door.
taken off to hide in the hills, thinking the village would be left alone once the soldiers realized only women, children, and the elderly were all who remained. They were wrong.
The National Park of Peace was founded in 2000 and hosts more than 30,000 visitors yearly, with 250 school visits. It also organizes debates, workshops, and exhibitions focusing on remembrance and peace.
Her worry had been prescient. On August 12, 1944, members of the Waffen-SS (along with Italian fascists—some local to the same hills—marched to Sant'Anna, where they erroneously believed the partisans were hiding. Grown men had
The story of Sant'Anna is engraved in many plaques in these hills. A story that I hope is never forgotten. Once I heard it over 36 years ago, I have thought of it innumerable times and told it in my own way in Petra's Quest.
