Casaglia: the testimony of Lucia Sabbioni (18 years old)

They knocked on the door and entered the church.

I turned to look at them: they had a band of bullets around their waists. They approached the altar and Don Ubaldo stopped praying and started talking to them. I didn’t understand, I looked at them and saw that they had livid faces that left no hope. The only word I understood was kaputt: I knew that word well, because my father, having worked in Germany for three years, had learned some German and when he got angry with us, he said it. It meant: I will kill you!

They forced us to go out. I was already at the door when I turned around and saw Vittoria from Cà Baguzzi, a beautiful girl, paralysed, in a wheelchair. I knew her well: I often went to her to buy ricotta – she used to make it herself – and at the Nanni’s parties: it was a big, beautiful family. The Germans forced her to walk and pushed her with a gunmetal while they shouted: Raus! Raus! She answered desperately: Can’t you see that I’m sick? Then she fell to the ground. From the square, I heard more shots coming from the church. The people were crying desperately, while the Germans observed them and kept them under control. They circled us, and they forced us to walk in the direction of the cemetery.

My god, there is no salvation now, we will all die!

As I looked in their faces, I lost all hope. When we arrived at the cemetery we met others, they commanded us to stop, when they weren’t able to open the gate, two soldiers shot it open with their guns. They ordered us to enter, I heard them say the word again: kaputt! I desperately searched for a way to flee, but I didn’t risk it. I said to my mother: “Come here to the front, close to the chapel!” In the meantime, I saw two other soldiers enter: one with a heavy tripod and the other one with a machine gun. They placed the weapons against the left part of the cemetery walls. Others entered, holding grenades in their hands, and so the bloodbath began: heart-rending screams, crying; the perpetual shooting of the machine gun and the grenades that exploded, the smoke that forbid us to breathe; pieces of flesh – arms, hands, heads – that flew through the air.

I screamed: “Mamma, where is Gianna, where are you?” No answer. In my arms I held my little sister Irene: she wasn’t screaming anymore, she was dead. I thought to myself. “Now I get up and fight back!” Then, still just to myself, I thought: “If I get up I will be killed, this machine gun will never stop.” The screams began to fade and I began to smell blood. I watched Vittoria dying, take her last breaths. All around severed heads and human remains. My little sister was hit in the face, she was missing half an arm and her face, and without eyes her head was reduced to a pulp. I could no longer see the ferocious faces of the two Germans who continued to load the machine gun: the wife of Gardeletta’s shoemaker, Cleofe, a strong woman who held herself up on crutches had fallen on me, a piece of her leg had fallen on my sister’s little body. You could still hear a few fleeting moans and then I fainted.

When I woke up, I asked myself: “Am I alive or dead? What if they bury me alive?” I touched myself everywhere, and everything I did was take human remains off my body. I thought they were mine. “It’s not possible: I’m hurt, I’m full of blood and no, I’m not dead!” I cried and Bertino came to my mind: Where will he be? If he would see the state I’m in! Meanwhile, the silence became even darker and the nauseating smell of death became even stronger. The machine gun had stopped shooting, so I tried to move. I felt a stabbing pain in my left leg and stayed there, waiting for the burial.

Suddenly I heard a child’s voice: “The Germans have gone away, but is there anyone that’s still alive?” it was the Tonelli’s child, who screamed: “Say something! Are you all dead? If anyone is still alive say something!”

I looked as him and said: “I’m wounded, but still alive, I think…”

Other voices screamed: “I’m alive! But how can you escape from here?” The child went to look outside the gate: there was no one anymore, at least for the moment. Two girls got up, to leave. I knew them. They were from Vado, and I would see them at village celebrations. I told them: “Wait, I’ll come with you!” I tried to get up, but I fell down again. I couldn’t keep myself up the pain was too strong. I screamed: “I’m wounded, I cannot walk, help me!” But they answered: “We can’t, we’re in a hurry!” I kept shouting: “You cannot leave me here, they will bury me alive! I’m scared, I’m scared!” Vittoria, one of the two said: “Alright, I’ll try to take you on my shoulders, hold on to my neck.” In front of the gate, she put me down to position me better. In this moment I saw my mother, her head split in two, her hair loose and soaked in blood. Vittoria wanted me to hurry up, but I asked for a moment to see what they had done to my Gianna. I saw her, I recognized her from her dress – lying on her stomach, unrecognizable, even if she seemed to still give some sign of life.

The Tonelli’s child didn’t want to come. He said: “I’ll wait here, close to mom, until my dad comes to pick me up.”

(Testimony of Lucia Sabbioni, „Il diario del perdono e della rabbia“, 2008)