Sant’Anna di Stazzema is a locality in the province of Lucca, in Tuscany, sadly known for being the site of one of the worst na#ifascist massacre in Western Europe during the Second World War.
Introduction note:
The na#i/na#ifascist reprisals in Italy are less known to English-speaking readers than Oradour sur Glane’s, France, for instance. However, on one side, they are part of the same strategy of unrestricted warfare against civilians which,at times, also took on the characteristics of a war of extermination conducted by the Germans on the Eastern Front. On the other, such reprisals are not only being conducted by the Waffen SS units but also the German regular army. This should lead to acknowledge how, in summer of 1944, the remaining inhibitory mechanisms of the use of violence were by then laid apart within the German Army.
At the dawn of August 12, 1944, three departments of the Na#i SS went up to Sant’Anna while a quarter closed downstream every escape route. The men of the country took refuge in the woods while women, elders and children remained in their homes, sure that nothing would happen to them, as unarmed civilians. Instead, the Na#i-fascists combed all the people they could find and brutally killed them with gunfire and hand grenades, and then burned their bodies. The victims were 560, including 65 children.
It was not a reprisal. As emerged from the subsequent investigations of the military prosecutor of La Spezia, it was a premeditated terrorist act and cared for in every detail. The goal was to exterminated the population of St. Anna, guilty of helping the partisans of the area, and subduing the neighboring countries, throwing them in terror.
Pics:
At Sant’Anna, on the nearby Col di Cava, stands today the shrine that collects the remains of the victims, crowned by a local stone sculpture of Vincenzo Gasperetti depicting a mother who squeezes his child in the chest. This is Anna Pardini, a 20-day baby girl, the youngest victim of the massacre.
The other pics show the Memorial of the victims and the ” Ring Around the Rosie” of the children murdered.
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