Authors: Claudio Pavone
The âDirectives' for the insurrection issued by the PCI on 10 April 1945 give the following examples of traitors to be killed by the GAPs and SAPs: â
Questori
, commissars, high-ranking state and municipal officials, industrialists and technical managers of production subject to the Germans'.
89
In this context the denunciations and warnings addressed to people by name acquired a particular intensity: âPrefect Mirabelli, your days are numbered!' wrote
L'UnitÃ
on 7 August 1944, including in its denunciation two engineers employed by Ilva, one of whom was defined as âdiabolical'.
90
One CLN, the Ligurian regional one, for its part, cautioned the
procuratore generale
(attorney general) for not having taken any action against the Fascists responsible for the murder of patriots held in the prisons.
91
Even Radio London singled out individual Fascist personalities, reckoned to be war criminals, as targets.
92
And in the French underground press lists of collaborationists to be executed are frequent.
93
Clearly, these initiatives and stances should also be interpreted as indicators of the ideas that were taking shape over the question of purging. Their immediate effect was to contribute to creating a climate of struggle in which at times the fearsome tones of certain appeals of the First International were heard once again. A message addressed to the Fascists of Monzuno (Bologna), guilty of not having kept faith with the pact stipulated for an exchange of prisoners and for having, in reprisal, attacked âinnocuous folk who were fighting only with their spades and hoes', reads:
We warn you that our counter-measures will be
terrible and with no half measures
. Your destroyed possessions will illuminate with their flames the hour of the just punishment, your relatives killed regardless of sex or age will appease the just ire of those who, thanks to you, are weeping and dying today. Our reprisal will reach you wherever you may be, and no refuge, nor bodyguards, will avail to save you. Even at the ends of the earth we shall strike you.
94
Compare this with the challenge launched in 1873 âalla Borghesia' by neighbouring Rimini:
Be warned that in our hearts we have the idea of a vendetta which will be terrible and exemplary; the day will come in which you will know that we are again masters of our
piazze
. There will no longer be either grace or pity for the murderers of 1848 and 1871. We shall mow down your heads even if they are covered in white hair, and with the utmost calm. We shall have nothing but death to offer. Death for your mothers, for your fathers, for your relations, until your cursed race is completely destroyed. Goodbye shortly, lords of the bourgeoisie.
95
The first general directives regarding the treatment of prisoners were issued by the CVL Command on 14 July 1944. These promised that âthe lives will be saved of those who give themselves up and solemnly undertake to do no further damage to the patriotic formations and the Allied armies', recommended that the promise of life âmust on all accounts be kept, and recalled that the prisoners were to be treated with humanity. Rapid exchanges are supported not least as a means of getting around the difficulty of setting up concentration camps.'
96
The corollary of this last circumstance was the lack of prisons for the criminals, and it was recalled by protagonists as different from one another as the restless Communist Elsa Oliva and the solid Christian Democrat Ermanno Gorrieri as a decisive fact proving the impracticability of a middle way between killing the prisoners, if they were held guilty of crimes, and letting them free.
97
This line of argument was used to criticise the commander of the 3
rd
Garibaldi Liguria division, the Catholic Bisagno, who was âreluctant about executions', when he should be convinced instead that the prisoners have immediately either to be sentenced by the tribunal and shot, or released.
98
âAbsolution or death' would be the conclusion reached even by the partisans of the Garibaldi division Pinan Cichero.
99
In the final decree of 19 April 1945 regarding the surrender of the Nazi-Fascist formations, a distinction was made between simple soldiers in compulsory service, redrafted or conscripted, who, once they had been disarmed, were to be set free, and their officers and NCOs, who should instead be interned, on a par
with all the members of the Black Brigades, the Muti, the GNR, the Decima Mas, the police corps, the
paracadutisti
, and so on.
100
In the twenty months of struggle, the treatment actually given to the prisoners was not only not completely in line with the directives just recorded, but revealed a remarkable variety of profound attitudes and motivations. âThe treatment that the partisan bands are to give captured Fascists â¦Â has been discussed. There are those who are asking for the “Yugoslav” system to be introduced, but the majority are against this', Revelli noted very early on.
101
More closely argued doubts appear in another diary, concerning a prisoner who is nonetheless defined as âa vile being':
I am troubled by the idea that he might be killed. How pleased I am that
I
didn't capture him! Thinking of the possible end that awaited him, I would have let him escape. One can kill in battle, but not in cold blood. Perhaps it is no fault of his that he is who he is, because life is a terrible mystery: who destroys a mystery without having got to know it?
Before being shot, this prisoner, the diary page goes on to say, âaddressed a fellow villager, asking him to say good-bye to his wife for him, and the latter replied: “You must be crazy if you think I'm going to do a scoundrel like you a favour.” This is what war turns men into; the ancients were right when they said that civil wars are far crueller than external ones.'
102
A Garibaldino political commissar, acting in close contact with âYugoslav-type systems', has since written:
I don't know whether all my comrades felt as I did, but every time someone was to be judged, I always asked myself how on earth I could judge another, who had given me the right, who had authorised me to sentence another to death, to take the life of a human being who had not done me any direct harm.
The answer the commissar gives himself âafter painful torment' â though he recognises how âthe profession of killing is a horrible profession' â appeals to the impelling value of experience: âVery often we were too generous and this later cost the lives of many comrades, because after letting go individuals who with their tears had convinced us of their innocence, we were then attacked by Germans guided by these very same men'.
103
âWe had no other means of defending ourselves; there weren't any prisons, we couldn't hold him', a woman partisan recounts; and adds:
So it was a real problem putting together the firing squad. I remember that later I came across one of the lads from the squad, who was a very dear friend of mine. He was looking at his hands and saying to me: âBut Trottolina [Tersilla Fenoglio Oppedisano], would you still marry a man who has killed another one? I've fired with these hands, and I've killed a man!'
Trotollina's reply combines the criteria of obedience and justice: âTake it easy, I'd marry him all the same, because you carried out an order which at this moment is highly moral'.
104
The difficulty of finding people to carry out the sentences was very widespread: âThe lads shuffled off as if to say: “But I haven't come into the mountains to do this sort of thing”.'
105
There was, then, a clash between appeals to force of circumstance and the goodness of the cause, but at the same time perplexity about the acts to be performed considered in themselves.
106
Other doubts appear about the methods of execution; but in matters of that sort methods and forms often redound back to the substance. Writing about roundups in Val d'Ossola, a partisan chief says: âIf I'd had my way, I'd have eliminated the prisoners, but that was impossible by now since it would have been extremely dangerous to shoot, thereby announcing our presence. Besides, none of us felt capable of killing with our bare hands some thirty prisoners like chicken, without causing wailing and moaning.'
107
Or again: âCould you bring yourself to cut the throats of nine men with a knife?'
108
Sometimes there was an intrinsic need not to let the most infamous crimes go unpunished. Chiodi recounts: âThey shot a sergeant who was generally thought by his companions to have made some partisan prisoners eat excrement.'
109
And Revelli:
Today one of our patrols met three German customs officers on the Lombard hills. They were the very same Germans of Isola, those who murdered Franceschi and the others last July. No pity. One of the Germans had a photograph of his children and
was crying and trembling. The same old story: they understand everything, they become men again when they're lost.
110
This theme of the German prisoners revealing themselves to be weak in the face of death appears widely in the partisan press and represents almost a counterpoint to the fear generated by the ruthless determination that the latter habitually displayed when it was they who did the killing. The face âof that German who begged for pity in Piazza Cadorna showing me the picture of his children' remained impressed in a Gappist's memory.
111
Another Gappist recounts: âDuring the interrogation, as often happened in those circumstances, the two [German] prisoners declared that they were prepared to enter our ranks, simply to save their skins':
112
the two were executed. The newspaper of a brigade of
autonomi
, many of whom were Catholics, wrote:
The German commander K â¦Â he actually has a human heart and, like so many others, is bewailing the fate of his wife and daughters whom he hasn't heard from for some time. Do you remember that German K again â¦Â the thirteen Italians he had shot at Borgo Ticino as a reprisal? Does he reckon that they didn't have wives, mothers, sisters, children who were bewailing their fate?
113
A sergeant of the GNR was first acquitted for lack of proof from the accusation of having directed a roundup, then shot for high treason.
114
By decreeing that the putting to death of captured men âwho truly proved to be prisoners of war' and of spies was to disregard any promise made to obtain their surrender, the military Command of the Ossola zone
115
contravened one of the norms mentioned above, but obeyed another which condemned war criminals to death, the execution being entrusted without more ado to the partisans. What actually happened was that the Fascists' resistance to the bitter end was stimulated once they became convinced that, come what may, they were doomed to be eliminated.
116
Some partisan Commands were so drastic as to leave no way
out, as when they prescribed: âMembers of the republican armed forces who are captured are to be shot in the same place where they are captured as a warning and example. The same applies to members of the German armed forces.'
117
Similar conduct is represented in a more hesitant form with these words: âFrom experience, the partisans were reluctant to take prisoners. A prisoner in partisan hands is always an encumbrance, besides being a danger.'
118
As things turned out, if the instructions of the high-level unitary organs, the CLNAI and CVL, were not followed to the letter, nor were those, which were often notably different from each other, of the lower Commands and the single political organisms. One Command felt the need to repeat that if the âoutlaws' of the Muti, the Black Brigades, the Decima Mas, and so on, had to be executed, âthe prisoner must be treated with dignity', as prescribed by the norms, which were not always applied.
119
One Communist political commissar spoke ironically about the fact that
the most pious bourgeois souls in the division were upset by the shooting of Fascist and Black Brigade elements, putting forward the excuse that it is pointless our adding other deaths to the millions of war dead, and saying that it is not against the Fascists or elements in the Black Brigades that one should be acting, but more realistically than the king, against the great capitalists whom we don't have in our hands.
120
Pelle-di-biscia (Snake-skin), one of Calvino's characters, âwas saving men one moment, and killing them the next: he was changeable and ambiguous'.
121
âThe prisoners are going to pieces. We're releasing them, even if they'll rush back into the arms of the Germans!' This, Revelli recounts, was the line taken spontaneously during a roundup.
122
There was no single attitude even about exchanges of prisoners. One protagonist, still offended by the fact that the formations were sometimes asked to capture prisoners in order to exchange them for arrested leaders, tells how a partisan
did not consider it worth the trouble risking so much to exchange a prisoner for a leader whom nobody knew â¦Â The fact that only high-ranking leaders were spared
by the enemy and that only they were granted the possibility of being exchanged, conflicted with the high sense of justice of the partisan, whose general and absolute principle was equality and the same right of all combatants to live.
123
âDavide' (Osvaldo Poppi), the political commissar of the Modena division, once criticised the exchange, which he deemed inopportune, between a militia captain and the mother of a partisan.
124
Things are expressed more extensively, but in a similar spirit, in this letter written on the eve of the Liberation: