ANNA ROSA NANNETTI 1944 OUT OF DARKNESS, LIGHT LIFE AFTER MASS MURDER - MARZABOTTO 2011 Association of Relatives of the Victims of Nazi-fascist massacres in the boroughs of Marzabotto, Grizzana, Monzuno and neighbouring districts To the martyrs who were shot To the martyrs who were deported To our surviving families, true PEACE BUILDERS Niccolo dell’Arca - Il Compianto (1463 c.a.) - Chiesa di Santa Maria della Vita, Bologna. Guardai la terra ed ecco solitudine e vuoto, i cieli, e non v’era luce. Guardai i monti ed ecco tremavano e tutti i colli ondeggiavano. Guardai ed ecco non c’era nessuno e tutti gli uccelli dell’aria erano volati via. Guardai ed ecco la terra fertile era un deserto e tutte le sue città erano state distrutte dal Signore e dalla sua ira ardente. (Geremia 4, 23-26) Edizione Settembre 2011 © Tutti i diritti riservati Progetto grafi co ed impaginazione: Alexander Grandi Venturi Stampato ed edito da: DIGI GRAF S.r.l. Via Cartiera, 118 - 40037 Sasso Marconi (Bo) Tel. 051.6781100 - Fax 051.6781122 www.digi-graf.com ANNA ROSA NANNETTI 1944 OUT OF DARKNESS, LIGHT LIFE AFTER MASS MURDER - MARZABOTTO 2011 Association of Relatives of the Victims of Nazi-fascist massacres in the boroughs of Marzabotto, Grizzana, Monzuno and neighbouring districts INTRODUCTION This book collects the eye-witness accounts of various people who survived the atrocities of 1944 in the boroughs of Grizzana Morandi, Marzabotto, Monzuno and adjacent districts. A first part was published in 2008 as “The Children of 1944”. The stories of survi- vors and relatives will go on being collected. This volume includes: - Accounts by “Children of 1944”. - Accounts by adult survivors. - Contributions by families and friends of survivors - Scientific contributions. - Documentation of what the eye-witnesses relate: the aid received from Switzer- land; reception in the most important Refugee Centre in Florence – to some a definitive home base, to others a momentary stopping place before moving on to other Refu- gee Centres; the places where men were selected for deportation to Germany; and the places destined for labour camps. - Monte Sole today. Pages are devoted to people who have helped, or still help every day, to keep the memory alive by their moral and material support, by studies, prayer, constant readiness to guide visitors round the sites of the massacres, recount the story of events, investigate it further, and those who invite us to speak in schools or institutions in their towns and cities. - Visits to atrocity sites. Children’s comments. - Remembrance Day. Shlomo Venezia and Elena Bono. 4 PREFACE So, a new collection of stories by the children of 1944. Anna Rosa Nannetti, one such herself, continues her search for the voices of a diaspora, spinning into one thread the lives of those who were the unsung victims of Monte Sole and its atrocities. She here completes her task with voices of adults and institutions, people who witnessed those events in their day, raising the collected eye-witness accounts, if possible, to still greater heights of humanity and pathos. The book that caused such emotion in those who had a part in its stories, and other readers besides, here takes on more vibrant significance still. It is generally known that the sentence which convicted various Nazi criminals on an equal footing has now become definitive. Much has been said about that sentence – or rather, those sentences, since the first degree conviction pronounced by the Military Tribunal of La Spezia was followed in 2008 by an equally weighty decision on the part of the Rome Court of Appeal. There was likewise lengthy debate immediately after the first verdict as to the utility of a crimi- nal trial held more than sixty years after the event. I think that those who voiced their legitimate doubts have received a definitive and exhaus- tive answer. There is a line demarcating civilization from benighted barbarity, and on this side of the line stand the founding values of justice and responsibility. That, surely, is the criterion justifying a trial that was clearly exemplary in the respect shown for the rules by all those conducting the court, as well as in the depth to which the facts were plumbed and the variety of voices given a hearing. The debate was followed by public law studies which completed the reasoning of the trial (including a recent essay by Pezzino and Baldissara, “Massacre”). We now stand at the more arduous juncture in which, at this distance from the events, we need to preserve their memory and lodge our appeal with future generations. It is here that the extraordinary operation conducted by Anna Rosa becomes such a vital pivot in this task of transmitting culture and preserving values. The simple legal component was undeniably rich and essential, and so was the judgement upholding the impelling need to honour humankind (on a par with many other such judge- ments in the course of the last few years). Over and above these, however, is the need to reckon with the wider world, which this book helps us to do. Besides the horror at the killings and the betrayal of humanity, the Monte Sole massacre had the tragic additional effect of wiping out a whole society of humble, dignified beings that animated the mountain bastions between Marzabotto and Vado. Hence the great value of Giorgio Diritti’s epic “L’uomo che verrà”, over and above its beau- ty of form in many scenes: for it fixes indelibly the faces, words, habits and lives of the people of Monte Sole which the wind of History swept away. Against the buffets of that disrespectful gale the strength and patience of Signora Nannetti acquire all the greater magnitude. As I pen these words I realize the privilege I had in acting for the civil plaintiffs at La Spezia, and shall always be proud to have done so. But these few words cast me in a simpler role: I too am a “son” of this neck of the woods, brought up to remember their story. I recognise, as others will do, not just the stories in themselves, but above all the spirit of a small farmer society which the efforts of many have brought back to life, but which needs con- serving as memory battles against the inexorable march of time. This the accounts assembled by our author enable us to do as each and every reader internalizes them and stores them away. And thus they take their place alongside History which tends to focus on the Great Events and forget “the people who built the walls of Thebes”. 5 Note, too, that this is no purely cultural operation: what we are updating are the very prin- ciples underpinning our national identity which we are required untiringly to spell out and proclaim. Calamandrei was wont to maintain: “Wherever an Italian died in the cause of liberty and dignity let your thoughts travel, for that is where the Constitution was born”. I believe his words of advice should still be heeded: so by all means visit the shrines of the massacre to find the values that would shortly stem from them, but in the same spirit read, too, these stories of the children of 1944. Attorney Manrico Bonetti Counsel for the civil plaintiffs in the trials investigating the massacres of Grizzana - Marzabotto and Monzuno 6 To the Eye-witnesses Dear friends, Thank you for welcoming me into your homes so kindly and considerately, enabling us to get to know each other more than will transpire from your accounts. It was nice to see old friends again, relatives, fellow-townsfolk and recall together our many emotions, so many events. But for all of us who didn’t know one another, what we went through was of a deeper order, I might say UNIQUE. Over those terrible days, months and years, though separate in our towns and villages and hamlets, we were united in our pain, our despair, the preservation of our dignity when it was constantly trampled underfoot. We may not have known each other, but we helped one another to salvage our lives, espe- cially the weakest of us, and prevent our families and communities from being wiped off our part of the globe, as a delinquent “extermination plan” intended. We asked ourselves the same questions, consoled ourselves with our nearest and dearest who would talk to us, caress us in word and deed, drawing on the highest human qualities. When we did meet up so many years later, we told our tales without restraint, a few hours, a few days. We spoke with tears, and pauses amid the flow of our stories, smiling at times and even amused to remember some naïve attitude, or how we marvelled at the unexpected and beautiful. We shared the story of our martyred families and these confidences brought us closer togeth- er. To think of all the people they loved, or were loved by. How much love they had dispensed, how much they had received. All that love which had silently fostered us was something we discovered anew, became aware of at those meetings in your homes. We now know for certain where we got the strength from to begin again and forge a new life, appreciating its value to the full. Ours is a story of pain and love. On top of the love from those who were barbarously murdered, we enjoyed the love of those who survived, those giants capable of passing on to even the smallest and weakest of us that legacy of love from those no longer physically near us, and enriching it day by day with the gift of their whole selves.