ITALY. Sent for Ed Stotz.
Tom Holloway (xuegx@CSV.WARWICK.AC.UK)
Wed, 3 Apr 1996 16:57:34 +0100
My experience with the destruction of the war is indirect.
My family moved to Italy when I was young and I attended an
Italian school. The town we lived in, La Spezia, had been a
major German port.
In the closing months of the war, The town had been
brutalized by heavy fighting. It was bombed by the allies
on a daily basis for over seven months. It was also under
attack from the sea. Allied destroyers and cruiser's would
quickly enter the port and batter it at point blank range.
For a year I heard no mention of the war. Finally I asked
one teacher who had lived through the war what had happened.
"We do not speak of it" he said.
Latter that year, in discussing history, we got onto the
subject of war. This teacher told us about a time when he
was only five. The Germans had gathered all the Townspeople
into the town square to witness the hanging of ten people
picked at random. The killing was in retribution for an
Italian Partisan killing of one German.
"I tried not to look" he said "...but I did and shall never
forget how much they suffered".
I asked him if he hated the Germans for it and he said,
"...no just the fellows who did it". When things got real
bad and they had to go into the Mountains, it was German
soldiers who carried his aging grandparents into the hills.
These soldiers he still writes to.
I understand now that the experience was too painful, even
in 1968 24 years after the war, for the people of that town
to discuss what happened. However they should have because
it teaches us the horror of war. Hopefully that horror will
keep us from repeating it.
That is why I find this list serv so important.
Ed Stotz