30.09.1944 – 30.09.2025

Thank you for all you do here and for preserving the memory of this tragic history. My father brought me here in 1986. He pointed to a house 400 metres up on the right-hand side of the road leading from Monte Termine, where he found 12 women and a child murdered by the Nazis. He found them on 6 November 1944. Lieutenant Kendall Brooke was holding an ambush position at point 5.1.2, near the campsite, patrolling the steep climb. During the changing of the guard, the Nazis shot him and captured him. In 1986, he told me that I would bring my children here. Roger Brooke, my sons Robert and Sebastian, and my brother Dave.
Thank you.

We had the honour of meeting Roger, Robert, Sebastian and Dave on 25 September.
Their main intention was to find the house where Kendall Brooke found, months later, the victims of the Monte Sole massacre and to give a name to the victims found by his father, who carried the horror of that discovery with him throughout his life.
Roger is a retired psychotherapist, and he asked us how we deal with the horror of what happened at Monte Sole every day in our work.
We explained that we occasionally need to take a few days’ break, and Roger emphasised that this is necessary in order not to risk becoming less sensitive to that horror.
It is not easy to “live with” Monte Sole, especially when the same horror is repeated for many people in too many areas of the planet.
But we have no choice: the victims, the survivors, the community of Monte Sole demand it of us every day.
[The photo of the South African military cemetery in Castiglione dei Pepoli is by Associazione Linea Gotica – Officina della Memoria]