Legacy of Sorrows

by Roberto Buonaccorsi

  Eventually the train pulled into the Bologna station and Brenst got out to a hatful of memories. He remembered herding the Jews from the area onto cattle trucks lined up in the marshalling yards and listening to their unanswered cries for help. He felt it was wrong then and now he felt disgusted by their actions. At that time it was war, but he could never reconcile war with what they did to the Jews. He heard the stories other SS men brought back with them from various death camps and pretended he didn’t understand what they meant by exterminating them.

  He remembered the layout of the city fairly well and decided to walk the short distance to the Via Venezia and the Sambucci’s flat.

  He felt the gun in his anorak pocket and experienced a sense of familiarity as he touched it. Very soon he would be at the flat and his training would kick in. You don’t hesitate from what you plan to do. Act confidently and get out as soon as completed.

  He saw the flats in front of him and he checked what he had written down in his notebook. Flat 1A, ground floor.

  He walked up to the door and checked it was the right one. He knocked and waited. A gruff voice answered ‘Who’s there?’ Brenst knocked again and this time the voice said ‘Go away, I’ll call the police.’

  Graziano took his Beretta from the drawer and motioned for Ivana to lie behind the settee facing the outside door. Before joining her there he switched off all the lights in the house. He primed his gun and waited.

  Brest knew that the element of surprise was now gone and that his prey was spooked, so he decided to go in hard. He pulled out his gun and took a run at the door, tensing himself for a shoulder charge. He hit the door full force and felt the lock give. He rushed into the flat and dived to the floor. Sambucci had turned out all the lights and was poised, gun in hand, behind the settee. Brenst heard the sound of two or three shots being fired at him and returned fire at the muzzle flashes. He heard a yell of pain as one of his shots found its mark. A wounded Graziano stood and ran at him firing on automatic with surprising speed for an old man and Brenst felt the rounds enter his chest. As he lay mortally wounded on the floor he loosed off a couple of shots at Sambucci, more in hope than anything else. As his eyes closed he thought he heard the sound of a body falling in front of him.

  The noise made by the shootings attracted the attention of neighbours and passers-by who crowded round the shattered doorway of the flat and stared at the two dead bodies lying on the floor next to each other.

  Someone had called the police and they were very soon in attendance. When they entered the flat they found Ivana Sambucci in a state of shock sitting on the floor against a wall. They called for an ambulance, but by the time it arrived Ivana Sambucci had died of a massive heart attack.

  When Comandante Bertolini was informed that the two older Italians who had been at the Hotel Bristol were dead, and the violent circumstances surrounding their death, he had a feeling that the stranger in the flat was the key to many things. He ordered his team to liaise with the Austrian police over the dead man and to get his photograph and fingerprints to them as soon as they could.

  When the results came back, he wasn’t too surprised to find out that Werner Brenst was an ex member of 16th Waffen SS and was at the hotel the night of the reunion. He sat at his desk thinking, ‘Why did Brenst want to kill Sambucci? What did he know or suspect?’

  He picked up his phone and spoke to one of his team, ‘Get me all the background you can on Graziano Sambucci and send a team to search his home and any other places he may have. Look out for anything that can be tied in with this case, or anything else that looks unusual.’

  Before the end of his working day he had his answer. Sambucci’s father and two of his children had been killed in the massacre on Monte Sole. He apparently wanted revenge for this and had intended blowing up the SS unit responsible at their reunion in Vienna when Walter Reder was their guest of honour. This was corroborated by three grenades his team had found in a lockup garage belonging to Sambucci. Tests showed they were of the same type and batch as the ones used in the bombing.

  ‘So,’ thought Bertolini, ‘Brenst found his killer and so did we’

  His thoughts wandered to Arcari and Verdi and he wondered what their involvement was in this, if any at all. He also wondered if Kuller’s was really a suicide after all and if the two suspects he had marked down for killing him were completely innocent. Either way, he knew that unless he had more evidence he wouldn’t be able to take it any further. With the Sambuccis dead, the evidence he needed had died with them, and it’s not without probability that if Kuller was murdered, then it could have been the Sambuccis that killed him.

  With a deep sigh he closed the case file, switched off his desk light and headed home.

  Chapter 17

  Some years had passed since the events of the Hotel Bristol and Maria had come to terms with the lies I had told her about that period. Moreno is all grown up now and is married to a lovely young girl called Monica. They have three children, Moreno, Bruno, and Carla, and they live on Corso Garibaldi in Bologna.

  After the events of the Hotel Bristol I had experienced an emotional release that had led me to a more secure place within myself. I still have bad dreams, and I still hear the screams of the dying, but they are not as loud or as vivid. Somehow, even writing about the events on the mountain has been a cathartic experience for me.

  I am now in my eightieth year and I am struggling to put the events of my life to paper, however my family have been very supportive of me.

  I know that I am the last one from that experience still alive, as I lost my best friend Italo to the ravages of lung cancer five years ago.

  For my eightieth birthday Moreno made me promise that I would go back to visit Marzabotto with Maria and all of his family. Perhaps it is time to take this last step for who knows how many years I have left.

  I agreed, with a resolved hesitancy, to go back to the mountain on the day of my birthday and that I would join them in prayer at the ruins of the farmhouse and at my old home. I suppose it’s a gesture that marks the occasion when I bend the knee at these places for if there is a God I believe he must be a monstrous creature who revels in the blood of the innocents. I will not be able to pray there for it is an art that has been lost by me through the events of time, but I promised myself that at least I will show respect for my dead family and will contain my oaths at the ones who took their lives.

  Epilogue

  April 18th 2011

  Moreno has come in his estate car to take us up the mountain. Maria and I have been silent for much of the morning. I think she is trying to respect my quiet and thoughtful demeanour.

  Moreno opened the door and came in with Monica and the children. ‘Hi Papà, happy birthday. You two all set then?’ We both smiled and nodded.

  The journey was a little cramped in the car but I was glad of the children’s singing and childish chatter. It seemed to fill us with just the right level of levity. Soon the mountain came into view and the car began the steep ascent up the winding road. I noticed that there had been no tarmac laid and it looked exactly the same as yesteryear.

  We finally came to the small track leading up to my Aunt and Uncle’s farmhouse and Moreno slowed down. We had to stop about fifty metres from the farmhouse as the track had, over the course of time, become quite overgrown. As we got out the car I heard the sound of the birds singing in the trees. It has always been so here. Perhaps it was the amount of trees and shrubbery lining the track that attracted them there.

  The farmhouse came into view and my first reaction on seeing it was sadness at the ruin it had become.

  As we walked into the courtyard the video in my head began playing the scene I often saw in my sleeping hours, whilst at the same time I was taking in the fact that there were three white crosses, each with a Star of David, arranged in a straight line in the ground. I slowly walked up to them and with Moreno’s help I knelt beside them. I ran my fingers over the three names and the inscription on them which
read, ‘Murdered on the 29th September 1944 by the SS.’

  Tears ran down my face as I quietly sobbed at the memory of these three wonderful people. Moreno helped me to my feet as I slowly walked back to the car. I had seen enough there.

  I could hear Maria’s voice as if in the distance saying, ‘Do you want to go on, Bruno, or have you had enough?’

  I looked at her and said, ‘Don’t be concerned, I’m just a silly old man.’

  We drove up the dirt road again to my old house and as I looked out the car window I thought I saw smoke drifting up from the valley floor. For a moment my heart jumped in fear. When I looked again I could see that it was just some clouds hanging low over the mountain.

  When my old house came into view I could feel everyone’s eyes focused on me in a caring way. I was resolved not to break down and to pay my respects in an orderly manner.

  The old house was in pretty bad shape as the rafters had all rotted away. The only parts still standing were the outside stone walls and some of the internal ones.

  Set in the ground were six white metal crosses with the Star of David on them. The names inscribed on them were still visible; Moreno, Carla, Gianpiero, Benito, Ricco and Lisa, with the inscription under their names being the same as I had read at the farmhouse.

  I closed my eyes and could feel the warmth of the sun on my face and could hear my brother’s calling me to play football as they ran ahead to the meadow. The aroma of Mamma’s cooking wafting through the open window became intensely real, as was the sound of my father sharpening his knives on the circular stone he turned with a pedal. I could even see my little sister Lisa shouting out in glee and tottering around the courtyard as she chased the chickens we kept.

  I was transported back over sixty-five years to a happy childhood playing on the mountain of the sun. I thought I could hear my Mamma and Papà saying to me ‘Bruno, don’t be sad, let it go and live your life in the present.’

  I don’t know how long I stood there but Maria told me afterwards that she had seldom seen me look as happy. I had a smile on my face stretching from ear to ear.

  When I opened my eyes and looked around the wreckage of my family home, it was with a new sense of realisation. For the first time ever I felt I had jettisoned the bitterness I had harboured for all these years, I was experiencing a calmness I had never felt before.

  I didn’t want to walk round the back of the house to the spot where the Germans had brutalised and killed my mother. She wasn’t there now and it would not have done me any good to see it. I decided that I didn’t want to go into the ruins and relive my horrific memories. Strangely, I did not have any thoughts of Kuller or his evil deeds. They had gone. I looked around at my own family gathered round me and smiled at them, ‘I’m ok; it’s been laid to rest. Let’s go home.’

  I’ve had plenty of time to think about my visit to the mountain and how it affected me. I can never, ever accept what happened but I have to move on. There will always be evil men in this life who will try to inflict evil on humanity, but I am convinced that at the same time there will also be good men who will stand up to them and their evil ways and defeat them because we will always be more in number.

  My family were the victims of an evil creed that many men espoused at that time, and like all evil creeds, they will always find followers, but man is essentially moral and instinctively knows right from wrong and will eventually find the path to goodness.

  I thought of Graziano who was so eaten up with hatred and the idea of revenge that he had killed thirty innocent people and had ended up being murdered himself. Even my own life had been filled with that same hatred for Kuller that it had motivated Italo and me to plan and execute a murder. I was fortunate that I was not found out by the authorities; however it is something I still have to live with.

  The evil from the massacres seemed to continue consuming lives and taking lives long after the event.

  Now I know that if I had remained in that place of darkness, then evil would have won the day and my family would have died for nothing. I realised late in life that evil can find a way to embitter the innocent and bind them to the past, but I lived and loved and raised a family and now have grandchildren. I also found a way to eventually come to terms with what happened without accepting it as being right. To let go of the hatred, fear and bitterness that had lived inside me for many years and to experience real peace for the first time. The one thing I am still convinced of is that the religious mind suffers from self-delusion if he thinks that his God will protect him from any harm. Many of the SS soldiers who took part in the massacres were from religious backgrounds; however their Christian beliefs did not deter them from carrying out their bloody mission. On the other hand, the majority of the villagers were very religious people, as were my own family, and I am sure they must have called out to their God for his mercy and protection to no avail, but how could a myth possibly have answered them.

  So, this is my story. If it strikes a chord with you and helps you to perhaps come to terms with your own personal tragedy, then writing it has not been in vain. No matter the size or type of traumatic experience you have gone through, don’t let the evil in it chew you up inside; believe me, it will ruin your life.

  If you have read this story and think this is not for me, my life is pretty ordered, you can never be sure that in your lifetime you will not encounter something that has the potential to completely devastate your entire life. If that time should come remember, be strong and stand firm against it, and yes, try to understand it but never accept it, fight it all the way.Above all, don’t let it eat you up inside, for if you do then it has won. Let it go, it is not a sign of weakness but of strength.

  THE DEVIL’S BRIDGE

  To Nonna Rina

  Author’s Note

  The correspondence between Mussolini and Churchill mentioned in this book is factual, although the contents of the letters are purely speculative and rely heavily on the rumours of the time.

  The Devil’s Bridge is still in use today and sits over the river Serchio at Borgo a Mozzano in Northern Tuscany in the province of Lucca. It was built in the early 11th century and is a well-known landmark.

  The Moschettieri Del Duce (The Duce’s Musketeers) was an elite force of Blackshirts, mainly of officer rank, who were Mussolini’s personal bodyguard. They were also used as the ceremonial guard on state occasions and during the fascist rallies. All the Moschettieri took a personal oath of allegiance to Mussolini unto death.

  Chapter 1

  Lieutenant Kurt Muller of the Waffen SS hurried along the long corridor of Palazzo Vittorio to the high wooden double doors at the end. He paused for a moment to look out of one of the many windows lining the corridor at the frenzied scene in the courtyard below. His was to be one of the last military convoys to leave Milan before the Allies arrived and his men were busy loading crates of documents, ammunition, and essential supplies onto a line of trucks parked outside the main Palazzo entrance. On the other side of the courtyard, some of his men were burning important papers: army codes, strategic military positions and operational plans that had to be destroyed, as they couldn’t take the risk of them being captured. The black smoke from this rose in curling swirls into the clear blue sky above, adding to the atmosphere of feverish activity. He took all of this in before resuming his hurried approach to the wooden doors ahead. He knocked on the double doors and heard a loud voice in Italian telling him to enter.

  Benito Mussolini stood with his hands clasped behind his back looking out of his office window at the activity below. Without looking round he said, ‘Well Kurt, what bad news do you bring me today?’

  Kurt Muller came to attention with a click of his heels, ‘We will be ready to leave within the hour Duce, the Allies are very close and we can’t hold them back for much longer.’

  Mussolini bowed his head as if accepting the inevitable. No more the strutting dictator, but a war weary old man. ‘Yes, I can hear the sound of their heavy artillery close b
y. The sound of battle has always made me aware that the lives of thousands of men are dependent on the right or wrong decisions by their commanders in the field. Who would have thought it would come to this, to a point of destiny, should I run or should I stay?’ As Muller looked at the Duce of the Italian Empire, he seemed to have lost the will to live. Muller had been detailed by Hitler himself to make sure that Mussolini was protected from any attempt on his life, and he was determined to follow those orders to the letter.

  As he looked around the room, he noticed there were some of Mussolini’s fascist leaders sitting at a table. One of them, the party secretary Pavolini, stood up and said, ‘Duce, we have a thousand loyal Blackshirts outside who will fight to the last man for you. We can make a last stand and die with honour instead of skulking away like rabbits as we try to escape.’

  Mussolini turned to face him, ‘And what of the thousand men we are asking to give up their lives for no other reason than our honour? What of their wives and sweethearts, and what of their children? Have not enough Italians died already for our pride and honour?’ He paused for a moment before continuing, ‘I’ve decided to leave here and try to reach Switzerland without endangering the lives of any more Italians.’

  The room fell silent as the Duce turned back to face the window. After a few minutes, Mussolini said, ‘Kurt, I want you to provide an armed escort for these comrades here and take them to the Swiss border. Make sure that the partisans don’t capture them. After doing this, your men can head for home or rendezvous with you as you head north.’

  ‘And what about you Duce, will you be leaving with my convoy?’

  ‘Give me thirty minutes, I have some things I need to attend to first, then I will join you.’

  Kurt Muller came once more to attention, gave Mussolini the fascist salute then left the room to supervise his men below.