Legacy of Sorrows

by Roberto Buonaccorsi

  There was an embarrassed silence round the table. Placido put his arm round my shoulders and gave me a warm hug. ‘You have seen much, Bruno, and suffered much. This has helped to make you the man you are now. I want you to consider this family as your own family from now on.’ He gave me another hug and pushed a glass of wine into my hand. ‘Maria tells me that she is in love with you and that you are in love with her, so I raise my glass in approval of this love. Salute!”

  We all clinked our glasses together and I laughed out aloud at this unexpected acceptance into the family. That was how I came to have this new love in my life, which changed me from being a loner to a man who cared with his whole life for another person.

  Placido and I became great friends and we spent many hours talking about the things that a father and son would normally have talked about. He became almost as close to me as my father had been and this feeling was reciprocated as he treated me as the son he never had. Maria was delighted at our closeness and it seemed to confirm in her eyes that her love for me was meant to be.

  Maria and I often spoke about her moving into my small flat in Bologna and eventually she made the break from her parents’ house. We planned to get married in a few months’ time with the wedding service being held in the church of Santa Maria Delle Stelle in Bologna, and the reception in the hotel Principessa. Even though I was an atheist, and would have preferred a civil ceremony, I realised that Maria needed the whole church experience to feel that she had been properly married. I asked Italo to be my best man and I was pleased that he agreed and said he was looking forward to the day. He had never been one for marriage and still considered it a bourgeois concept invented by the capitalist system to control the individual freedom of expression of the proletariat. Personally, I think he just wanted to bed as many women as possible without commitment.

  Maria and I wanted to start a family straight away, which led to the conversation about where to live once married, as the flat was too small for children. Maria asked me about the properties in Marzabotto, ‘Bruno, you have your family house outside the village and you are probably the legal owner of the farm as well. Do you think you could ever live there?’ I was taken aback by this. I had never thought about living in Marzabotto and didn’t think I could even visit the area, never mind living there. ‘Maria, don’t ask me to do this. The very thought of living there fills me with dread. I just couldn’t do it.’

  ‘I thought as much Bruno. What do you think about selling the house and the farm? What we could get from the sale may help us buy a place of our own in Bologna. What do you think?’

  It sounded a sensible idea, but I just wasn’t ready to talk about selling the properties just yet. I didn’t want to talk about anything to do with Marzabotto; it was still too painful for me.

  ‘Give me some more time Maria. It’s still too fresh in my mind.’

  ‘Bruno, it’s 1958. It happened fourteen years ago. I know you still feel the loss, but what about when we have a family? Will you push them away when they ask about their grandparents and other family things, or will you be able to tell them about the good things you did on Monte Sole with your family and friends? You don’t have to forget your family Bruno; it wasn’t their fault they died, and it wasn’t your fault either; however, it certainly will not be the fault of any children we may have in the future.’

  I stood facing her open-mouthed. Maria was right. It was time to start living a normal life again and to try to put the horrors of what I witnessed on Monte Sole behind me. I could never forget what I saw, but I didn’t need to have this dark cloud hanging over me and depressing me whenever I thought of my family. It was time to start a new life and hopefully a new family.

  I contacted a estate agent in Bologna and sought his advice on what to do with the properties. Later on that day, I shared with Maria what he had told me.

  ‘No one is living in the villages and farms on Monte Sole since the massacre and the Allied air raids that followed later. The Germans didn’t leave there until just before the war ended when the whole mountain was targeted by Allied heavy bombing that eventually forced them out. Since then, vegetation has overgrown almost all of the ruins so it would be highly unlikely that anyone would find it an attractive proposition to buy there. There is also this shadow of the massacre hanging over the villages and you know how superstitious people can be.’

  Maria gave a deep sigh, ‘Que sera, sera Bruno. Maybe in time it will change.’

  As I stood in the church waiting on Maria, I glanced over at Italo who was standing there with a grin on his face. I whispered in his ear, ‘What’s so funny, Italo?’ He leaned over and whispered back to me, ‘When we chased the girls together Bruno, you were always the one they fancied, so it’s a joy for me to see you off the market from now on.’ We laughed and hugged.

  When the music played the entry anthem ‘Ave Maria’ everyone in the church stood as Maria and her father walked slowly down the aisle. I had never seen such a beautiful woman; she was radiant. The afternoon sun shining through the stained glass windows of the church seemed to focus solely on Maria as she walked towards me. Her smile matched the radiance of the sun itself. I knew without a doubt in my heart that I was in love with this woman and would be till the day I died.

  Chapter 6

  When the war ended, Hans Kuller was still in uniform and stationed near the Austrian border. He and the rest of his SS comrades knew that they had to very quickly decide what their next step was to be. Major Reder had already escaped to Germany and Kuller was thinking about leaving that very night for his home town of Munich in Bavaria. First, he would enter Austria and then make his way there. They were now having an open discussion in their barracks on what to do. Sergeant-Major Palframan stood up to address his comrades.

  ‘The options are very clear, comrades. We are the SS, and in following orders, we had to do what many people would now view as war crimes. We can leave for Austria as an organised unit and disband there, or we can leave from here in civilian clothes individually.’

  Kuller stood up to reply. ‘You can all do as you wish. However, for me there is no alternative. I leave by myself tonight in the uniform of the Wehrmacht. My reason for this is very clear. If we leave from here as a disciplined body of SS soldiers, we will be arrested by the Americans or the British for alleged war crimes and put on trial. That trial may have one end: our execution. I will leave by myself in the uniform of a soldier of the Wehrmacht returning to his homeland. There will be many such soldiers on the road and I hope to go unnoticed amongst them.’ He stood to his full height, gave the Nazi salute, and walked out the door.

  It was early evening when he put on the uniform of a Feldwebel, a Sergeant in the Infantry and was about to leave the barracks for the vehicle compound when he came across some of his SS comrades in the courtyard. ‘Hans, listen.We will have a better chance of escaping if we all leave together as Wehrmacht soldiers returning home. We all have fake ID and we can take a Wehrmacht truck for transport. What do you say?’ Hans thought for a moment. ‘What about the partisans? They may attack us if they see a small military unit.’ His friend, Peter, an SS trooper, replied ‘Even the partisans are not so stupid. Why would they risk their own lives to stop five or six German soldiers returning home? There are thousands of them swamping the roads still armed and trying to escape a POW camp.’ Hans took his time in answering, ‘All right lads, but we have to leave now. If partisans or allied troops stop us we will have to fight our way out as our IDs are not that good and may not stand scrutiny.’

  They made for the vehicle compound and commandeered a military truck with no unit markings on it. Peter volunteered to drive and Kuller sat up front with him. The other four SS soldiers sat inside the truck with weapons primed and ready for action should they meet any trouble. They reckoned they were only about fifteen miles from the Austrian border and, if things went well, should be across it in a few hours.

  They were beginning to relax when an explosion seemed to open
up the road in front of them. This was quickly followed by the sound of small arms fire and voices shouting. The men in the back shouted ‘Partisans!’ and began returning fire. Kuller and Peter opened their doors and jumped out of the vehicle onto the roadside. Already standing there waiting for them on the road were about twenty men dressed in a variety of military clothing and holding sub-machine guns aimed at them. The leader of the group shouted, ‘Sergeant, tell your men to stop firing or we will shoot to kill.’ Kuller immediately shouted to his men, ‘Cease fire, cease fire!’ The SS men in the truck stopped shooting, and came out throwing down their weapons and raised their hands above their heads. The Partisan leader then said to Kuller and Peter, ‘Lay down your side arms and raise your hands as well.’ They did as they were told. The partisan leader said, ‘We are the 10th Garibaldi Brigade, my name is Vittorio and we are authorised to check all transport heading to Austria for escaping Italian fascists, Nazis or SS personnel. I will need to see your identification papers and search the truck for anything suspicious.’ Kuller could feel the tension in the air as the Italians went efficiently about their business. Eventually, the truck was cleared and Vittorio walked up to Kuller and asked him in German for his papers. Kuller and the rest of the men handed over their papers without a word. Vittorio took some time examining them before saying, ‘Where are your orders for returning to Austria, Sergeant?’ Kuller gave a short laugh and said, ‘Orders, what orders? We just want to go home. The war is over and you have won, Vittorio. Just let us go home.’ Vittorio seemed to accept this. ‘Well, Sergeant, you can all go home. However, you will have to walk. We still have fascist militia to fight and we will need your weapons and transport for that. The border is only a few miles along the road and it is manned by British troops. They will see you are taken care of. Thank God, it’s not the Russians. They are less friendly and are not taking any German prisoners.’ Kuller thanked him. Turning to the rest of his group he said, ‘All right, we can go home now, let’s go.’ Eventually they reached the border post, where they were strip-searched by British troops who then processed them into a POW camp where they would be eventually interviewed by the Military Police.

  It did not take them long to find out that Kuller was in fact an SS Sergeant in the 16th Waffen SS. However, as there was no war crime listed against his name, they could not hold him for very long, and after some six months in a special SS prisoner of war camp in Nuremburg he was set free. The other SS men he had escaped with were found out to have been on the SS staff in the death camps in Poland and were put on trial. They were all convicted of crimes against humanity and were imprisoned for varying terms.

  Kuller thanked his lucky stars that his unit had left no survivors on Monte Sole to come forward and testify that he was not only present there, but was one of the SS leaders. The British knew that his unit had been active in the killings but could not prove he had been with them at the time. He smiled as he made his way into Vienna to start a new life. His first thought was to find work and earn some money, which he did at a bakery near the city centre. The owner of the bakery had lost a son in the war and needed some help with his business. He took one look at Hans with his straight back and height and asked him if he had worked in a bakery before. Hans had helped an old uncle a few times in his bakery in Salsburg when he had visited with his family before the war when he was a boy. When he mentioned this to the baker, he jumped on this and offered Hans a job.

  Kuller worked at the bakery for three months, sleeping in the back shop on an old mattress to save as much money as he could. The baker gave him his keep and a small salary, which Kuller managed to save for the next part of his journey. Eventually, he decided he had saved enough for his travel expenses and other costs to give him a start in Munich. The next morning, he said his farewells to the baker, thanked him for his help and left.

  It was January 1946 when Kuller arrived in Munich. His first impressions of his home city on the bus ride left him feeling angry. There didn’t seem to be a building standing. He found out later that Munich had been targeted seventy-seven times with heavy bombing raids during the war, and it had left the city with very little infrastructure. Everywhere he looked, he saw ruined buildings and people huddled in what was left of their homes. Long queues were lining up at the soup kitchens the Allies had set up to feed the population. He walked with a heavy heart along what was left of the once wide avenues of the city to his parent’s house on Friedrich Strasse. When he got there, he stopped outside the ruined building of what had once been his house and just stared at the wreckage. ‘This was my parent’s home. Where are they? What happened to them?’ He felt a fury welling up inside him, but it wasn’t aimed at the Allies for what they had done to his city, or what he could see in front of him. It was the Jews he blamed for all of this. Those damn Jews are responsible. Hitler was right. If there had been no Jews in Europe left to speak against us in America and Britain there would have been no war.

  He was about to walk away when he heard his name being called. He turned to see an old woman he recognised as a neighbour of his parents’. ‘Hans, is that you? Thank God you’re safe.’

  ‘Mrs Prellwitz, it’s good to see you again. Tell me, do you know what happened to my parents? Have they moved away?

  Mrs Prellwitz joined her hands together as if in prayer. ‘They were killed in the last bombing raid. It was early morning and most of us were still in bed when they came. There was no warning. The bombs just suddenly fell. We had no chance. I was pulled from the wreckage with just a broken leg but my husband was killed.’ She started crying.

  Kuller walked away without a word.

  ‘I’ll find somewhere to rent, then I’ll get a job’ he thought. ‘I’ve got enough money saved to last a little while longer. Maybe there’s a vacancy in a bakery; I’ve got the experience to handle that now.’

  He walked away without another thought for his parents. As far as Kuller was concerned, they were just another casualty of war and he had seen plenty of those.

  Chapter 7

  It was in 1960 when I found myself nervously sitting in the Maternity Hospital waiting for news. Maria was in the delivery ward having our first baby and I was feeling very anxious about the whole experience. What added to my nervousness was she had been in there for over twelve hours and I wasn’t allowed to see her. The doctor had said that the baby was tangled up in something or other and it was going to be a complicated job setting it free. It was moments like this that I felt my lack of a proper formal education. Because I had left school at the age of thirteen, I found myself ignorant of understanding things like how the human body worked. The doctor had mentioned things I didn’t understand but knew that I should, so I nodded my head as if I did.

  I heard the sound of a baby crying and it sounded as if it came from behind the green swing doors facing me. I sat upright in the chair and wondered if it was mine.

  Then, a doctor came out to see me. ‘Well, Signor Verdi, everything went very well, although your wife is very tired and she is resting at the moment with your son.’ It took a moment for this to sink in.

  ‘A son, doctor? Are they both all right? When can I see them?’

  The doctor laughed. ‘Yes, they are both fine and I can let you see them both for a few minutes today, but that’s all. She really does need rest.’

  I got off my seat and followed a nurse into a small side room.

  Maria was lying in bed with our new-born baby in her arms and she indeed looked exhausted. Her hair was soaked in sweat, but through her tiredness I saw a look of joy in her eyes as she gazed at her baby. I walked up to them and gently kissed Maria on her cheek before kissing my son on his head.

  ‘Are you happy Bruno? I knew you wanted a boy first so I thought I’d surprise you,’ she said in a weak voice. I just looked at my son. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I stretched out my hand and very gently held his hand in mine.

  ‘Maria, I couldn’t be happier. Let’s call him Moreno, after my father, and we’ll call
our next child after your parents.’ Maria nodded. I could see that she wanted to rest, so I kissed her again and left.

  Moreno proved to be a great blessing in my life. I loved to hold him in my arms and tickle his tummy. His squeals of delight filled our new home with the sounds of family love. We had now rented a three bedroom terraced house that wasn’t far from Maria’s parents’ house. The rent was a large chunk of our salary and, with Maria now only working part-time, we didn’t have much left over at the end of the month. I was also studying for the civil service exams that were held every year, and if I passed them, I hoped to be accepted as an administrator with the local Council. The pay was much better than I made at the Principessa and there was even a pension at the end of your working life.

  My friendship with Placido had deepened and it came as a shock to us all when he had a stroke that took his speech away from him. This once animated man became a quiet figure sitting in his armchair in the kitchen. He seemed to lose heart quite quickly and it was no great surprise to the family when he died the following year; a great sadness fell over us all for quite a considerable time. Maria was concerned at her mother being alone and I knew without asking that she wanted her to move in with us. And so she did. Now we were a real Italian family.

  Moreno was growing up to be a real country boy with a love of fishing, hunting and the outdoor life. One time, when he was about fourteen years old, we went hunting together for wild boar in the wonderful countryside surrounding Bologna. Wild boar is a very dangerous animal to hunt. They can suddenly charge you from their hiding place and maul you with the horns on their snout, giving you a nasty gash. We also knew that over the years some hunters had been killed by them. Moreno thought that it added a little spice to the hunt.

  As we entered some dense undergrowth with our rifles at the ready, I was charged by one from behind. He caught me with his horns with such force that I was propelled to the ground, injured in my right leg. As I fell, I saw Moreno calmly raise his rifle and take aim as the boar charged once again, this time at him. He fired, and the animal squealed as it dropped dead literally at Moreno’s feet. He rushed over to me and looked at my wounds, which, thankfully, were not really that serious. I had two deep gashes on my calf which were bleeding quite freely. Luckily we had some ointment and bandages in our backpacks, which - with a snort of Brandy from my hip flask - soon had me limping back to our car, dragging behind us a large dead boar. I was so proud of my son that day. How he had stood in front of a charging boar calmly taking his aim had taken great courage from him. Needless to say, we lived well off the carcase and the storytelling for quite a long time.