Memorials and Propaganda

There was a Mass for the Dead on 25 April, and then people walked to the memorial on the road to the next village and remembered the 14 people who were killed there in 1944. Every village along the Lines that criss-crossed the Peninsula as the Allies advanced from the south has its memorial. Some are to entire villages massacred. Most are for fewer victims, reprisals carried out as fronts moved back and forth leaving desperate pockets of troops fighting, cut off from their orderly retreat or advance.

In our village an English soldier entered the grocers and found himself face to face with enemy troops and promptly shot one of them. Then a truckload of soldiers sent to investigate was ambushed by the partisans on a hillside nearby. The rastrellamento began at dawn. Some of the victims were on their way to work at first light, others were taken from their houses, pointed out by locals accompanying the soldiers.

Twelve were taken. Much later in the day a small boy was heard telling his grandmother he had seen who was pointing out the victims. She shushed him too late and they were both taken to join the others.

Later, when the Front had passed on towards Florence, the villagers took some of those who had given up victims into the Piazza for their retribution. My father-in-law was in the house, recovering from the Russian Front, and went out to end the dreadful scene. He said that there has to be an end, before we are all drawn into barbarity. Even now there is gratitude that he did stop the killing that day in the Piazza, and at least for this village, reconciliation started there and then.

Religion has the rituals to remember those lost without reigniting rancour and revenge. But apart from a religious rite in remembrance each anniversary, perhaps it is time to stop using sad memorials for political purposes.