Legacy of Sorrows

by Roberto Buonaccorsi

  I looked around at the surrounding countryside and tried to get my bearings. I didn’t know where I was but, according to the position of the sun and the time of day, I reckoned I was on the right side of Bologna. I painfully climbed up the mountainside for as long as I could manage, and only stopped when I was out of breath. It seemed like I had been walking for hours and the upward climb was beginning to tell on my legs. When night eventually fell I broke off a thick branch from a tree and used it as a blind man would a white walking stick. From my earliest days I had been used to the black nights that fell so quickly on the mountains like a dark blanket covering the woods, so I felt comfortable enough in the darkness, but I also knew the dangers of walking in it without a torch. After a long time walking in the pitch-black night I thought I must be pretty close to the partisan’s camp so I kept walking in a straight line and sang out my name hoping that a perimeter guard would hear me. I stumbled a few times in the dark and once or twice almost lost my balance as I wandered too close to the mountain’s edge.

  Eventually, I came across some of my fellow partisans on patrol duty guarding the tracks leading up to our camp, and after a warm welcome and a brief conversation, two of them helped me back to safety.

  I was greeted by my comrades like a returning hero, even though I had failed in my mission. Gianni debriefed me on my escapades and told me that when news had reached him of my capture and subsequent interrogation, he had feared the worse for me.

  Once I was cleaned up and after a few days’ rest, I felt suitably refreshed and ready to resume my duties, although I was still sporting a bruised and swollen face and stiff limbs as a memento of German hospitality. One positive note from the operation was that I now felt the other partisans accepted me as an equal despite my young age and this certainly gave me more confidence for future missions.

  When Italo returned from his patrol, he made a point of seeking me out. When he saw me, he gave me a big hug and a kiss on both cheeks. ‘Well little tiger, I heard you have sharp claws, well done.’ With a smile on his face he said, ‘Pity your memory was not as sharp as your claws, as you forgot about the German tactic of leaving two men behind.’ He gave me a playful tap on the shoulder and said, ‘Good to see you back, comrade.’ That was the first time he had called me that, and it filled me with a sense of pride. I was also too embarrassed to tell anyone the truth that I hadn’t forgotten about the German tactics but had simply fallen asleep and hadn’t been watching what they were up to.

  With the Allies pushing the Germans back, it wasn’t long before they took up defensive positions on Monte Sole, a natural fortress to defend. We received orders to disrupt their supply route from the north, and we moved into position for this. The fighting was furious with no quarter being given from the Germans when they captured partisans, and we reciprocated, killing every German we captured. Such was the nature of the bloody conflict we were engaged in.

  Where we differed from the South of Italy was in the civil war we were fighting. Our enemy was the Fascist Brigate Nere, the Black Brigade militias. We were not only fighting the Germans, we were also fighting the Italians who had remained loyal to Mussolini’s Repubblica Sociale Italiana which was based around the Lake Garda area. To complicate matters even more so, the Royal Italian Army was fighting on the side of the Allies, and was being used almost exclusively in a combat role against the Brigate Nere. It was a sad affair that Italians were killing Italians and I wondered then what it would lead to after the war. Could these open wounds heal sufficiently to give us a healthy Italian body?

  On 24th April 1945, units of the Polish Independent Brigade were the first Allied troops to enter Bologna. The Poles were surprised and not very happy seeing Communist partisans in the city, and they shouted abuse whenever they saw us marching in column. We understood these feelings because The Russian Red Army was now occupying Poland, and Polish freedoms and independence were being brutally repressed there.

  These units were followed a few hours later by contingents of the British 8th and American 5th Armies. Liberation had eventually arrived, and the local population greeted the Allies with jubilation. Street parties were being organised everywhere and there was a real feeling of unity and joy as the war was passing us by.

  We wanted to continue fighting with the Allies, but we were ordered to stand down and disband. We were of the opinion that the Allies didn’t want bands of armed communists operating at their rear. Our leaders tried to convince the Allies to allow us to join forces with their regular troops but we were ordered again to lay down our weapons. If we wanted to continue fighting, then we would have to join the Royal Italian Army on an individual basis.

  We found out after the war that the British were afraid of a Greek situation developing in Italy, where armed communist fighters, the ELAS, had attempted to overthrow the Greek government with an armed coup following the German retreat in 1944. Their stated aim was to set up a communist Republic. With around 100,000 armed fighters they almost succeeded before they were put down by the British Army.

  On the 28th of April, we heard the news that Mussolini had been captured at a partisan checkpoint on the road to Lake Como, at a small town called Dongo. He had been taken overnight to a remote farmhouse by another group, together with his mistress, Clara Petacci, who had also fallen into the hands of the partisans.. The following morning they were taken outside into the courtyard, put against a wall and shot. The partisans then put the dead bodies into their van and, under orders from partisan headquarters, took them to Milan for open display. They travelled up the Corso Buenos Aires, the main thoroughfare in Milan, to the Piazzale Loreto where they hung them upside down from an Esso Garage scaffolding.

  The local people reacted furiously at the sight of them hanging there. One old woman fired a revolver four times into Mussolini’s body. With tears streaming down her face, she shouted at him, ‘You killed four of my family you murdering bastard! they were in your army, so here’s a bullet for each of them.’ Another man held his child up to Mussolini’s face and urged the child to urinate on it. Others beat the dead bodies with anything they could lay their hands on. They blamed Mussolini for leading them into a disastrous war, and for the German occupation of Italy that had almost destroyed the country. Many blamed him for personally getting too close to that maniac Hitler and for also listening to his ranting.

  With Mussolini dead, the war in Italy came to an end but the killings continued. Reprisals throughout the north of Italy against the Fascists or anyone suspected of being a Fascist took place. Before the killings stopped, over thirty thousand Italians had been killed, either by the partisans or by ordinary Italians. I suspect quite a few old scores were settled during those days. The reprisals took place mainly in the north of Italy with very few killings happening in the south of the country. What I didn’t understand was that the Allies stood back and allowed this to happen. I don’t think that particular wound has ever been healed. Even to this day the country, underneath a thin veneer of unity, was still divided between the right and left.

  When the war ended and the partisan brigades were disbanded, I was left on my own. I wasn’t fifteen years old yet and I was left to fend for myself. I knew that the Allied Military Government (AMG) had set up some sort of refugee relief system to meet the demands of the many homeless people in the area, including the many orphans who roamed the streets. The various charities were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of people seeking help and so the AMG offered extra assistance. One of their refugee houses was an old convent converted as a shelter for use by homeless men of all ages, and I ended up there. The charities fed us there every day. At 6am we were all given a breakfast of bread and cheese washed down with coffee, and at 7pm we were fed an evening meal which was usually pasta with something.

  I quickly realised that, if I wanted to get on with my life, I would have to get out of the shelter during the day to find some work. Most of the men were just lying around the building during the day feeling sorry for themselves,
and I didn’t want to end up that way. A lot of them were drinking heavily, and the alcohol combined with the boredom of the day was leading to some bitter fights developing between residents.

  I used the shelter as a base just for sleeping in and eating, and during the day I went out looking for any kind of work. I did this for several years, odd jobs anywhere ranging from waiter to labourer until I was eighteen. That was when I volunteered for the Italian Army as a regular soldier. Since I had first joined the partisans at the age of thirteen, I had matured into a strong young man. I was now just under six feet tall and I weighed around twelve stone. My active life in the mountains with my comrades had helped me to fill out and I now felt that I could face just about anything. My previous experiences serving as a partisan came in very useful, especially when it came to infantry training, and I was very quickly promoted to the rank of Corporal.

  I was stationed around Rome for a while and was relatively happy with my life in the military, although I still missed my family very much and grieved for them every single day of my life. I did the usual things that young soldiers did. I drank a bit too much, I chased the bar girls and I sometimes visited the brothels. I was trying to live my life to the full and not mourn what I had lost on the mountain all those years ago.

  One day, as I was walking through the city, I saw an exhibition advertised outside a local museum. It was displaying memorabilia and old photographs from the war years from both the Axis and Allied Armies.

  Having nothing better to do I went in and wandered amongst the collection. One section was dedicated to the Wehrmacht units that had been stationed in Rome during the conflict. I looked at some old photographs in frames hanging on a wall under the heading ‘SS Units attached to the Wehrmacht’ and there he was, the tall, blonde Sergeant. Numbly I stared at the old photograph of my mortal enemy, until I felt the same old fear build up within me. As I began to physically tremble, an elderly man standing beside me asked if I was feeling all right. I nodded to him, ‘Just recovering from the flu, I’ll be all right in a moment.’ I again looked closely at the photograph and read the identity label underneath it, Sergeant Hans Kuller, 16th Waffen SS Division Reconnaissance Battalion. At last, I knew his name.

  I stood for some time just looking at his face. Old memories of my family’s personal tragedy and of the villagers of Marzabotto came flooding back to me. Tears welled up in my eyes and formed little rivers of grief running down my face. Now that I knew who he was, I resolved to find him and to kill him. Not able to look at his face anymore, I turned away, and as I did so, another photograph on the wall caught my eye. It was in a frame on its own. It was Major Walter Reder, the 16th Waffen SS Commanding Officer. I recognised him from his pictures in the local newspapers of the day. Major Reder had been tried by a military court in the town of La Spezia in 1951 and had received a life sentence for war crimes, which was to be served in its entirety, in the Military Prison in Gaeta, near Naples. At least he had been captured and some form of justice served, but Kuller was still free. There and then, I made a vow, that even if it would cost me my life, I would find this animal, this murderer, and kill him.

  I served in the Army for 7 years until I was twenty-five, when I then left the military and headed back to Bologna to start a new life there, hopefully for the first time without the intrusion of guns or violence.

  I had a small army pension that would help pay the rent on a little flat I liked in Via Roma, near the city centre. My next goal was to find work, so I applied for a job as a waiter I saw advertised in a local paper for the Hotel Principessa and was surprised to find Italo, my old Partisan comrade, doing the interviewing for the job. He was now the headwaiter for the hotel and he was delighted to see me. We hugged and kissed and spent the interview time catching up on old times. I was offered the job on the spot, and was asked to start the following morning at 7am sharp. I was to shadow a more experienced waiter for the first day, who would help me learn the ropes, and after that, I would be on my own.

  Italo took me to meet the waiter I would be shadowing so that I would not be wasting anyone’s time the next day. He introduced me to a girl about my own age whose name was Maria Fabiani. She was a bubbly type of person with long brown hair and was really quite good looking. I liked her straight away. I realised after the first two or three days that there was a mutual attraction between us, and after a few weeks in the job Maria and I started going out together. At first, we would just go to a movie after work and then, after a while, we progressed to going out for meals, followed afterwards by long chats over a coffee or a glass of wine at the Bar Regina, a trendy bar near the church of Santa Maria Delle Stelle in the city centre. We would sit and talk into the small hours about anything that came into our minds, laughing and joking over the silliest of things. Sometimes we would just sit holding hands and enjoying each other’s company, but most of the time we sat talking about the things of the day. By this time, I was a confirmed communist atheist and Maria was an innocent Catholic conservative. I would kid her on about religion and she would pretend to pray for me. We would laugh at our differences, however, I wondered if her parents would laugh too, if I ever got to the point of meeting them.

  It was a Monday evening in May and I was sitting in the Bar Regina waiting on Maria. Italo had arranged it so that we had our days off at the same time and we would usually spend them together. Maria came into the bar with her usual smile lighting up the room like a bright ray of sunshine. When she sat down beside me I could tell that she had something on her mind. After a while she said, ‘Bruno, would you like to meet my parents on our next day off?’ She shifted uneasily in her seat and before I could answer she continued, ‘They are dying to meet you.’

  Of course, I readily agreed, but I could tell there was something else on her mind.

  ‘What is it Maria, what’s troubling you?’

  Maria was reticent to continue. Eventually, she plucked up the courage to say, ‘My parents were asking me about your family Bruno and I had to tell them I don’t know anything about them or anything about your background. It got me thinking that we have never spoken about your past and I wondered why.’

  I was stunned. It had become such a way of life for me not to think about the events on Monte Sole and to try to blank out any thoughts of my family that I hadn’t thought about the effect on Maria of never mentioning them. I held her hand tightly in mine and kept my gaze on my wine glass, afraid to look at her. ‘Maria, it’s not what you think. I find it very painful to talk about my family because of what happened to them. Have you heard about what the SS did on Monte Sole during the war?’

  She nodded, ‘They killed everyone there.’

  ‘I witnessed my own family, every last one of them, being butchered by the SS just outside Marzabotto. I lost all of the members of my family in that rastrallemento. Mother, father, brothers, sister, even my aunt and uncle with their own family, so you can understand why I never talk about them. I even lost all of my friends and neighbours. Maybe one day I will tell you the story, but I think I have told you enough for you to understand.’

  When I looked up again at Maria, she had tears running down her face. She picked up a tissue from the table and dried her eyes.

  ‘Bruno, I had no idea. I’m so sorry for bringing this up please forgive me.’

  ‘How could you possibly have known Maria, there is no forgiveness necessary, so let’s have a glass of wine and put this behind us.’

  We kissed and I felt the warmth of her lips and knew from that moment that I loved this girl and that I would spend the rest of my life with her.

  On our next day off, we headed for the bus station and took a bus to Maria’s parents’ house. I had been invited there for lunch and I was feeling very nervous. This was the first time I had been in a family gathering since before the massacre and too many memories of my own family mealtimes were filling my mind. Maria held my hand as we knocked on the old oak door of the small town house. ‘Remember Bruno, my father’s name
is Placido and my mother’s name is Laura. Just be your usual good-natured self and they will love you.

  The door was opened by Maria’s mother who gave us both a big hug and asked us in. Her father was a tall man with a distinguished look about him, which was emphasised even more so by his grey hair and neatly trimmed beard. He politely shook my hand and offered me a glass of wine.

  Over lunch, the subject of the war came up and Placido asked me if I had been involved in it. I simply answered yes.

  He told me that he had fought with the Italian Army in North Africa and had been wounded in action fighting the British near Benghazi. He had been shipped out to a military hospital in Sicily for recuperation until the Allies landed and he was made a prisoner of war until 1944. The more the wine flowed the more Placido wanted to hear of my own military involvement. After more prompting, I finally gave him the story of my war, although when I spoke, I couldn’t look him in the eye.

  ‘I was only thirteen when the SS came to my village and murdered all my family. They killed my parents, three brothers and my baby sister. I also saw them kill my uncle and aunt and my young cousin. I watched the slaughter from a nearby hillside unable to help any of them. My mother was raped before my eyes before the SS slit her throat and killed her. My aunt had her unborn baby cut out from her womb and both of them were killed. When the slaughter had finished, I left Monte Sole and joined the partisans in Bologna. I fought the Germans until the war ended in April 1945. After a few years of different jobs, I volunteered for the Italian Army until I left that last year for the hotel.’