At dawn on August 12, 1944 several trucks carrying hundreds of SS (300 to 500) in black suit, armed to the teeth, came to Valdicastello in Pietrasanta, and from there the soldiers, in long rows, distance of four to five meters of each other, scrambling to reach St. Anne, a group of houses scattered on the mountains of Versilia, where many refugees were displaced from Pietrasanta, Forte dei Marmi and other locations Versilia. There are also those of Livorno and La Spezia. Another column of SS who had begun to rise up from the valley of St. Anne Vezza Farnocchia got to split into two teams. In this way, Germans, by implementing an encirclement maneuver, there came from two different points, from the mouth of a task and the other just by Farnocchia. To tighten the vise Monte Ornate move another column of soldiers.
So far this is the beginning of the criminal attack against the people of St. Anna, told in books published before the trial took place against the celebration of the 10th SS who participated in the massacre. From the statement of the accused former SS Ignaz Alois Lipper found that, on the morning of August 12, 1944, he was ordered to go get ammo for the machine gun on the truck which is about 500 meters from the soldiers. Since that time there was no way road to reach both Farnocchia that St. Anna, it appears that the location where it was left autocarrro could only be the village of Mill Stazzema.
It is from Mill Stazzema who began the slaughter of innocent Vezzoni well described by Joseph in his first book "swastika in the channel and the second entitled" A priest helpless in a story in the middle - Don Giuseppe Gospel and his memorial. "
That morning, while passing by the Germans to reach St. Anne Mills, were noticed by the parish priest Don Fiore Menguzzato. On seeing the German soldiers as they approached the church, the priest thought he wanted him, then tried to draw the attention of the military. He jumped from a window to escape into the woods. Reached the trail was killed by a volley of shots of gunfire. Immediately after the rectory was set on fire also, after he was killed the father of Don Menguzzato, Antonio, aged 65, his sister Teresa (36 years), the sister Claudina Sirocchi (28 years), nieces and Elena Colombini Columbine Graziella Menguzzato, respectively 13 years and one year and six months. After completing this carnage German soldiers continued their march to arrive at St. Anna.
But why was killed Don Fiore Menguzzato and with him all his family? Who was Don Fiore? The priest was suspected of keeping relations with partisans. He also spoke of an attempt made to get him to establish a peace between the partisans and the Germans. Certainly he was moved from the priestly office that led him also to receive, in his parish, the members of the German patrol attacked by partisans when it went up July 31, 1944 in order to notify Farnocchia displaced people in the country issued by the command of German troops operating in Versilia. The priest did all the first aid to the wounded, so that they receive a written statement in German, and was invited to observe those who read the pastor and his family considered worthy Germanic army. Born in San Benedetto di Cascina (PI) when he was killed was twenty-eight years. His family came from Trentino Alto Adige. In 1942 he was called up and enlisted as a chaplain. After the armistice of 8 September 1943 was captured by the Germans who started in a concentration camp in Germany, from where he could go home.
around St. Anne's for a while 'time partisans were stationed, refraining from any act of insurgency in that location, not to endanger the population, that it might suffer through no fault of the violent reprisals of the Nazis. It is possible that they had thought that the locals as well as internally displaced persons (who suffered from hunger and found it hard to survive) potessero essere in qualche modo di aiuto ai partigiani. Sta di fatto che quando i tedeschi intimarono agli abitanti di Sant’Anna di sfollare a Sala Baganza, in provincia di Parma, tutti lasciarono le loro abitazioni per rifugiarsi nelle zone vicine per poi ritornare a casa quando si diffuse la notizia che il pericolo era scongiurato. Anziché raggiungere Sala Baganza preferirono rimanere abbarbicati su quel monte, anche se la vita d’ogni giorno era durissima.
Prima dell’eccidio tutti i giorni i ragazzi più grandi volgevano i loro sguardi in direzione di Pisa, dove i tedeschi avevano fermato l’avanzata delle truppe alleate; dalle cortine fumogene e dall’esplosione delle cannonate cercavano di capire i movimenti del fronte. Ma proprio in quei giorni i tedeschi si prepararono a compiere un’azione d’inaudita violenza contro la pacifica popolazione di Sant’Anna, forse convinti, a torto, che la zona fosse piena di partigiani. Intanto, il 29 luglio 1944, dopo l’ordine di sfollamento dei tedeschi, il Comando delle “Brigate d’assalto Garibaldi” con un foglio dattiloscritto, visto da molte persone affisso sulla porta della bottega esistente sul piazzale della chiesa di Sant’Anna, sprovvisto di qualsiasi firma, invitò le donne, i vecchi e i bambini a non obbedire all’ordine dei tedeschi, incitandoli a effettuare una sorta di resistenza passiva. Gli uomini erano esortati ad armarsi sia col fucile da caccia that a pitchfork.
This paper, then stored for a long time by Don Giuseppe Vangelisti, it was shown, some years later, by Alderano Vecoli Capezzano, nell'eccidio who had lost two sons, Renato Bonuccelli, author of "Fifty years ago in Versilia , a book that tells the criminal deeds of the Germans, whose small Bonuccelli August 12, 1944 was an eyewitness, seeing as it was also murdered his mother and other close family members and loved ones.
It was so tragic that it came at the dawn of August 12, 1944. When the soldiers arrived there with swastikas, the partisans had left St. Anna for several days. A Valdicastello, the first thing the Germans did before starting to climb to St. Anna, was to impose by force on other people to follow them to carry, loaded on the shoulders, heavy boxes of ammunition. With the butts of their rifles, the Germans knocked on doors of houses, thus indicating that they are prepared even to kill if someone had refused to give them the support required. Upon arriving at St. Anna
a soldier with the gun fired a red rocket. From the mouth of Mosceta task and got up to two more rockets in the sky, the signal was set to launch the attack. When people saw the SS to get so many, the men had barely time to flee into the nearby woods, in the country were only women, the elderly and children. It was the women to put tables outside their homes, laid with bread, water and wine to be offered to the Germans at the time of their arrival. The family members of small
Renato Bonuccelli and himself were taken out of the house and force were driven, along with other people in a room on the ground floor of a nearby house that was closed out. In the throes of a major terror those poor people did not know what to do. Suddenly a soldier broke the window panes in the middle of the room and threw two hand grenades. Suddenly the door was open, so those poor wretches saw a machine gun ready to fire against them. The mother of the little Renato immediately took her child by the hand and led him in the wooden ladder to bring him upstairs. In doing so saved his life. Those were his last words he said to the son. "I'm going to take the grandmother Ida and away", but did not see the baby no longer appear. The small
heard repeated shocks and strong bursts of grenades that did jump the old floor, while the air became stifling the dust and the acrid smell of smoke. It was a real massacre with the use of flamethrowers.
in turn see these lethal devices in close proximity to other houses women who lived there thought they only wanted to burn the houses, as they did in Farnocchia twelve days before, so much so that they began to pull out the furniture and household goods in an attempt to save them. But now the SS showed their true intentions, putting to shoot wildly against the unbelieving people who, without words, fell to the ground lifeless. They shot well against the beasts who were in the stables. They had no mercy for anyone. A group of people was pushed with the butts of their rifles in the church. On those poor people were thrown hand grenades and machine guns unloaded. "Kaput! Kaput! All kaputt! "Screamed the SS, while the bodies of the victims were hit by the fire of the flamethrower. Surprise to a pregnant woman in her home, her belly was quartered and the unborn child (almost complete) was fired a gunshot to his temple. This vision appeared before the eyes of Elio Toaff, who was the only rabbi in Versilia partisan, when, the day after the massacre at Sant'Anna di Stazzema salts.
In the room where his mother where he had accompanied to her little son, they saw that there was also his cousin, Alfredo Graziani and three women who were huddled in a corner to avoid being reached by bullets coming from the outside. On the bed lay two dead women, a grandmother Zaira Lasu was probably after being injured at the beginning of the attack the soldiers had managed to go upstairs. Some bullets shatter the glass of the window. When not heard più il crepitio delle armi Alfredo Graziani si avvicinò al bambino dicendogli: “Dobbiamo uscire. Sai dove andare?”. “Sì lo so, devo scendere giù nel canalone, dove c’è il mio babbo che si è rifugiato in una grotta insieme a mio zio. A questo punto l’uomo tolse i mobili che aveva messo sopra la botola e l’aprì. Fece le ultime raccomandazioni. “Qualunque cosa tu veda, anche la mamma morta, non ti devi fermare, non devi piangere, devi correre in silenzio da tuo padre”. Sceso al piano terra il piccolo Renato vide la stanza piena di tanti corpi senza vita. Riconobbe suo nonno Angelo, in fondo alla scala giaceva quello di sua madre. Il bambino la chiamò e la tocco inutilmente, view took her purse and fled toward the canyon. Out of found his way barred by a flamethrower, and came back around and rolled over to go around. Also entered the nearby houses to find a way out. Dead and blood everywhere. There was no other solution was to go from there. It took courage, went behind the hard-throwers and finally ran down into the canyon. Make his way in among the tall ferns lost the trail.
At that point he began to call his father strong. Some of the soldiers heard him and began to shoot in his direction. He heard the bullets whizzing over his head and small branches broken by the bullets fell around him. Finally he saw the bushes sprout suo padre che gli fece cenno di tacere e di andare da lui. I soldati non udendolo più pensarono di averlo colpito, quindi se ne andarono.
Nella grotta ritrovò suo zio Amerigo. Il bambino continuava a piangere. Suo padre credendo che il piccolo avesse fame tentò di confortarlo dicendogli che fra poco sarebbe arrivata la mamma col mangiare. Udite queste parole dagli occhi del bambino uscirono fiumi di lacrime, non riuscì più a parlare. Dopo diverso tempo sentirono la voce del nonno Nello che chiamava suo padre. Usciti fuori dalla grotta lo videro con la camicia tutta macchiata di sangue. Rinchiuso nella stanza dov'era stata fatta la carneficina era finito sotto un mucchio di cadaveri e, miracolosamente, era rimasto illeso. Alla vista dei superstiti della strage il nonno Nello allargò le braccia e con un filo di voce disse: “Tutti morti. Sono tutti morti.” Il 12 agosto 1944 il bambino Renato Bonuccelli vide uccidere sua madre Rosa Cesarini Guidi in Bonuccelli, il nonno materno Angelo Guidi; la nonna materna Ida Pierotti nei Guidi, e l’altra nonna Zaira Pierotti nei Bonuccelli.
Furono cento i bambini uccisi; una femminuccia, la creatura più piccola, aveva appena venti giorni. Molte persone finirono bruciate vive insieme ai loro cari. Don Innocenzo Lazzeri, il parroco di Farnocchia che era sfollato nella canonica di Sant’Anna, la mattina del 12 agosto aveva appena finito di celebrare la Santa Messa, quando s’accorse che stavano per arrivare i tedeschi. The father begged him to flee with him into the forest, did not want to listen. Strong Christian faith that animated him, began to comfort the people around. The fact of being a priest led him to believe that the Germans would have respected and thought maybe, with his presence, to be able to prevent the massacre, but was not heard and he was also martyred. While standing was blessing the bodies of people killed, was seized by two SS men who dragged him around the church and bell tower. When it was reported in the square, he stooped to bless the broken little body of a child a few months. While doing the sign of the cross was riddled by a volley of shots, and his body was thrown on the pyre, where he burned along with those other victims massacred in the church. Behind the sacred building of St. Anna, the Germans also killed the eight men who were brought up there, the boxes full of ammunition.
On the feast day of St. Chiara some SS soldiers preferred not to be complicit in this barbarism, which is why, instead of participating in the carnage, without being seen by fellow soldiers, unloaded the blows of their guns against certain animals, making believe he had participated in the massacre. In this way, some inhabitants of St. Anne managed to escape.
A woman, Genny Bibolotti Marsili, locked in a barn with a lot of other desperate people, screaming, hid her baby for six years between two large boulders that are located behind the front door. All died, hit by bursts of machine guns and fire throwers. Only the baby survived. The creature from its hiding place she saw her mother, head wound and dripping blood, in the moment, to distract an SS in order not to her the child, threw a base in the face of the soldier who went to shoot those poor people already dying. German, surprised by the reaction of the woman, she responded by shooting at the last volley of shots, then walked away.
With this heroic mother managed to save her child that it is only after eight hours spent after the massacre, a man pulled out of the barn. The child, blackened by smoke, had third degree burns on the body, reported to have remained near the door while it was burning. To heal needed medical treatment, which lasted eighteen months. Escaped the massacre even a few people who remained unharmed in the bodies of relatives killed, pretended to be dead with them. When the SS ridiscesero downstream at St. Anne were the remains of 560 people, including children, elderly and women mercilessly slaughtered by wild beasts in human form.
The first to reach St. Anna, perhaps the same afternoon in which the massacre took place, with smoke still rising from burning houses in a vain attempt di portare aiuto, fu il parroco di La Culla, don Giuseppe Vangelisti, accompagnato da alcuni parrocchiani.
Arrivato sulla piazza della chiesa il gruppetto vide davanti ai loro i resti di ossa umane bruciate. Dalla conta dei teschi risultò che le vittime lì trucidate furono 132. Altri 17 resti furono contati al Colle; 22 a Coletti, 17 lungo il sentiero che da Coletti va al Molino e 3 nel bosco. Per le persone bruciate dentro le case non fu possibile neppure conoscere il numero approssimativo. Fu don Giuseppe Vangelisti a recarsi presso il Comando tedesco da cui ottenne l’autorizzazione per la sepoltura dei resti delle vittime.
Quella del 12 agosto 1944 fu, salvo smentite, la più grande strage degli innocenti compiuta dalle S.S. in Italia durante la seconda guerra mondiale.
La strage di Sant’Anna, raccontata sui libri di Giorgio Giannelli, Lodovico Gierut, Renato Bonuccelli e Giuseppe Vezzoni, e su diversi articoli pubblicati sul periodico Versilia Oggi e su altri quotidiani nazionali, dove si parla anche delle testimonianze dei pochi sopravvissuti alla spaventosa strage degli innocenti, a distanza di più di 60 anni fa ancora rabbrividire. L’orrore che ancora suscita è immenso.
Dopo diversi decenni, quando finalmente si aprirono gli “armadi della vergogna” e fu possibile prendere visione dei documenti relativi alla strage di Sant’Anna, si apprese che essa fu compiuta dalla 5 ^ Compagnia del II Btl del 35° Rgt. della 16^ SS Grenadier Division, made up of young volunteers, aged 16 to 20 years, under the command of Captain Austrian Anton Galler, not by Major Walter Reder, long suspected of having participated in and directed that action criminal. On 31 October 1951 the military court sentenced to life in Bologna and to degradation military Major Walter Reder, the massacres committed in the province of Bologna and other places, and for the killing of a Bardine S. Terenzo (Lunigiana) of the 53 civilians rounded up in the area of \u200b\u200bValdicastello August 12, 1944, but acquitted him for lack of evidence "from the charge of having taken part in the massacre of Sant'Anna. The infamous Captain Galler, who After the war he went to work in a uranium mine in Canada, died in Spain in 1995, with murder. This was a war criminal who had the nerve to talk to their superiors that August 12, 1944, to Anne, his unit had killed 270 supporters.
With the decision of the Military Tribunal of La Spezia on 22 June 2005 was imposed life imprisonment to 10 former SS guilty of having participated in the massacre. From this ruling that helped to determine any cause of action in retaliation against the people of St. Anne. Basically it was a planned extermination of defenseless citizens. Not evidence emerged that some Italian adhering to CSR may have you participated wearing the uniform of the SS, even though the immediate postwar period, circulated to some testimonies of survivors of the massacre that among the perpetrators, there were even a few fascist zone. Also circulated the names, but in the course of the defendants listened in class or letters rogatory have never confirmed this hypothesis.
Unfortunately, most Italians, wearing the camouflage of the SS and the masked face, took part in the horrible massacre.
For many years, for love of country, I always thought that the horrible massacre in St. Anna, committed by the German SS on 12.8.1944 had not participated in the Italian fascists in disguise, who had joined the Italian Social Republic was founded by Benito Mussolini After his release from a free field, dressed in camouflage fatigues, the same as those of the German SS and their faces covered by nets to avoid recognition. In the absence of certain elements relating to participation in this massacre of Italian fascists also, I refrained, in my first story, from speaking.
confess to having committed a serious mistake not to have explored this topic. Really it seemed unthinkable that this horrible massacre of the Italians had also participated.
Unfortunately, from reading the following books:
- Versilia the massacre of the innocents by Giorgio Giannelli
In this book we read the testimony of Ennio Navarri which was put by the Nazis in the group of children che furono rinchiusi in una stalla. Quando la porta fu riaperta, delle S.S. presero delle mucche. Fu proprio quando un componente di questo gruppo trascinava fuori una mucca che il piccolo Navarri lo sentì gridare “ Dai mora “. Il Navarri rimase colpito da questa frase detta in chiaro dialetto versiliese. Quando per l'ultima volta la stalla fu riaperta, i tedeschi gettarono in mezzo a quei ragazzi bombe a mano, Ennio Navarri, che stava in fondo alla stalla vicino alla greppia, riusci a spiccare dei salti sopra le bombe prima che esplodessero, riuscendo così a salvarsi.
- Un prete indifeso in una storia a metà- Don Giuseppe Vangelisti e il suo memoriale , scritto da Giuseppe Vezzoni e finito di stampare nel mese di novemre 2006 ..
In relation to the presence in St. Anna on the day of the massacre of Italians and Fascists Vezzoni Joseph spoke of the memorial written by Father Joseph, who said a certain Joseph Pardini, he heard a soldier say when he was killing a cow, "you're not shows dead yet, in strictly local terms. " Also in his memorial
Vangelisti has entered the Don told him the day after the massacre of his father Don Innocenzo Lazzerri: "Do you know who was there? So and so, the 'acknowledged Valdicastello while my brother took off the mask now thinking away from everyone. " The
santannina Cesira Pardini during the trial confirmed the SS in the classroom shooting his mother was an Italian, definitely.
interview given to The Nation on 13.4.2002, Ennio Haun who was three years old when the massacre took place, and that was with her grandmother in Sennari, told how she had said when Germans arrived in the village including there were also Italians, the first arrivals were in uniform while the second group who arrived had their faces masked. The Germans arrived just begins to bring out people from their homes. At that moment one of them said to his grandmother "move you to kick him.." Then an officer arrived and ordered him to bring the German people of Sennari Valdicastello.
Basically from this interview is che gli abitanti di Sennari furono graziati perché sembrerebbe che in quella località c'era qualcuno che aveva lavorato coi tedeschi.
In merito alla denuncia della strage, ci sono le testimonianze rese in sede dibattimentale di Lidia Pardini,Renato Bonuccelli, Angelo Berretti. Marietta Mancini, Arnaldo Bertolucci e Ettore Salvatori, quest'ultimo riconobbe , che tra i tre italiani che con i tedeschi uccisero la gente in località Colle, c'era un un tale Giuseppe Ricci, che in un confronto presso la pretura di Pietrasanta avvenuto nel dopoguerra ammise di aver partecipato alla strage perché fu minacciato di mortedai tedeschi
Due pietrasantini, Francesco Gatti ed Egisto Cipriani, furono riconosciuti dal fratello dell'ex Nicola partisan Badalacchi between the SS Italian in Lucca that escorted the column of civilians rounded up to the Valdicastello 12.8.1944. Here I stop, because the discourse on the Italians who participated in the horrible massacre is still long, which is why those who want to delve into this tragic time, you may do so by reading the book Vezzoni.
A massacre in the time of Louis Gierut
Gierut also reported in his book the testimony of Nicholas Badalacchi, which was also the Vezzoni, Geirut also published his work in the many testimonials received in writing made by former partisans , 5 who survived the massacre, and politicians also came to occupy the highest positions in the Stato, di pittori e scultori e di famosi scrittori e giornalisti.
Concludo col citare il libro sulla strage di S.Anna, scritto dallo storico professore Paolo Pezzino ( nominato dal PM consulente tecnico del processo celebrato contro le SS) dell'università di Pisa, il quale riporta numerose testimonianze dalle quali risulta evidente che fra le SS che commisero la strage c'erano anche diversi italiani che furono uditi parlare nella nostra parlata durante l'orrenda strage. Le frasi udite sono state tutte riportate nel libro dello storico professor Pezzino..
