Marzabotto massacre | |
---|---|
Location | Marzabotto, Italy |
Date | 29 September – 5 October 1944 |
Target | Italian civilians |
Attack type | Massacre |
Deaths | ~ 770 |
Perpetrators | 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS |
The Marzabotto massacre, or more correctly, the massacre of Monte Sole, was a World War II war crime consisting of the mass murder of at least 770 civilians by Nazi troops, which took place in the territory around the small village of Marzabotto, in the mountainous area south of Bologna. It was the largest massacre of civilians committed by the Waffen SS in western Europe during the war.[ citation needed ] It is also the deadliest mass shooting in the history of Italy.
In reprisal for attacks on German soldiers by partisans and the Resistance between 29 September and 5 October 1944, SS- Sturmbannführer Walter Reder led soldiers of the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS to systematically kill hundreds of people in Marzabotto. They also killed numerous residents of the adjacent Grizzana Morandi and Monzuno communes, the area of the massif of Monte Sole (part of the Apennine range in the province of Bologna).
Historians have struggled to document the number of victims. Some sources report up to 1,830 victims; others estimate 955 people killed. The Peace School Foundation of Monte Sole reports 770 victims. This number is close to the official report by Sturmbannführer Reder, who reported the "execution of 728 bandits". Among the victims, 155 were less than 10 years old, 95 were aged 10 to 16, 142 were over 60 years old, 454 were male and 316 were female. Five were priests. [1]
Giovanni Fornasini, a parish priest and member of the Resistance, risked his life to protect the population from the Nazis during the massacres. While Fornasini saved the lives of many of his parishioners and managed to escape immediate death, he was later discovered by an SS officer while he was burying the bodies of those killed in the massacre, which was forbidden by the Nazis. The officer accused him of crimes committed in the Marzabotto area. When Fornasini confessed to having helped the villagers avoid execution, the officer shot and killed him.
On 10 June 1944, four days after D-Day, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne in Nazi-occupied France was destroyed when 643 civilians, including non-combatant men, women, and children, were massacred by a German Waffen-SS company as collective punishment for Resistance activity in the area including the capture and subsequent execution of a close friend of Waffen-SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe, who an informant incorrectly claimed had been burned alive in front of an audience. Kämpfe was a commander in the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich.
Marzabotto is a small town and comune in Italian region Emilia-Romagna, part of the Metropolitan City of Bologna. It is located 27 kilometres (17 mi) south-southwest of Bologna by rail, and lies in the valley of the Reno. The area includes the site of an ancient Etruscan city and also the place of a modern massacre that took place there during World War II.
Walter Reder was an Austrian SS commander and war criminal during World War II. He served with the SS Division Totenkopf and the SS Division Reichsführer-SS. He and the unit under his command committed the Vinca massacre and Marzabotto massacre in Italy in 1944. After the war, Reder was convicted of war crimes in Italy.
The Distomo massacre was a Nazi war crime which was perpetrated by members of the Waffen-SS in the village of Distomo, Greece, in 1944, during the German occupation of Greece during World War II.
Valley of Death in Fordon, Bydgoszcz, northern Poland, is a site of Nazi German mass murder committed at the beginning of World War II and a mass grave of 1,200–1,400 Poles and Jews murdered in October and November 1939 by the local German Selbstschutz and the Gestapo. The murders were a part of Intelligenzaktion in Pomerania, a Nazi action aimed at the elimination of the Polish intelligentsia in Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia, which included the former Pomeranian Voivodeship. It was part of a larger genocidal action that took place in all German occupied Poland, code-named Operation Tannenberg.
The 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Reichsführer-SS" was a motorised infantry formation in the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II.
Massacre in Rome is a 1973 Italian war drama film directed by George Pan Cosmatos about the Ardeatine massacre which occurred at the Ardeatine caves in Rome, 24 March 1944, committed by the Germans as a reprisal for a partisan attack against the SS Police Regiment Bozen. The film was based on the 1967 book Death in Rome by Robert Katz. An Italian court gave producer Carlo Ponti and director Cosmatos a six-month suspended sentence for their film which claimed Pope Pius XII knew of and did nothing about the execution of Italian hostages by the Germans. The charges eventually were dropped on appeal. The names of the victims are shown in the closing credits, as opposed to the cast credits and crew members.
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Max Simon was a German SS commander and war criminal during World War II. Simon was one of the first members of the SS in the early 1930s. He rose through the ranks of the SS, and became a corps commander during World War II. After the war, Simon was convicted for his role in the Marzabotto massacre and the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre.
The Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi war crimes archive or armoire of shame is a wooden cabinet discovered in 1994 inside a large storage room in Palazzo Cesi-Gaddi, Rome which, at the time, housed the chancellery of the military attorney's office. The cabinet contained an archive of 695 files documenting war crimes perpetrated on Italian soil under fascist rule and during Nazi occupation after the 8 September 1943 armistice between Italy and Allied armed forces. The actions described in the records spanned several years and took place in various areas of the country, from the southern city of Acerra to the northern province of Trieste and as far east as the Balkans; it remains unclear, to this day, how the archive remained concealed for so long, and who gave the order to hide the files in the immediate post-war period.
The Man Who Will Come is a 2009 Italian film directed by Giorgio Diritti. It was released in Italian cinemas on January 22, 2010. In the original version the film is in Bolognese dialect with subtitles in Italian.
Events from the year 1944 in Italy.
Two of the three major Axis powers of World War II—Nazi Germany and their Fascist Italian allies—committed war crimes in the Kingdom of Italy.
Giovanni Remo Fornasini was an Italian Roman Catholic priest, resistance member and patriot in Bologna. He was murdered by a German Nazi Waffen SS soldier and was posthumously awarded Italy's Gold Medal of Military Valour. He is being investigated by the Catholic Church towards his possible canonisation. His beatification was celebrated in Bologna on 26 September 2021.
The Vinca massacre was a massacre carried out near Fivizzano, Tuscany, by the German 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division from 24 to 27 August 1944 in which 162 Italian civilians were killed.
The San Terenzo Monti massacre, sometimes also referred to as the Bardine massacre or Bardine San Terenzo massacre, was a massacre carried out near Fivizzano, Tuscany, by the German 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division from 17 to 19 August 1944 in which 159 Italian civilians were killed.
Mario Musolesi was an Italian soldier and Resistance leader during World War II.