Hundreds of delegations marched in a procession in Marzabotto to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi massacre at Monte Sole. In the square, 1,200-1,300 people gathered in front of the city hall. The procession moved to the church, where Cardinal of Bologna, Matteo Maria Zuppi, celebrated mass in front of the tent that would host the official speeches of the two presidents, the Italian President, Sergio Mattarella, and the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who were present for the commemorative ceremony.
A large screen was also set up in the square to give everyone the opportunity to participate. At the end of the mass, a wreath was laid before the monument to the fallen. Mattarella and Steinmeier landed at Bologna airport, returning from the state visit of the Quirinal tenant to Germany. The two Heads of State flew together on the same plane and together reached Marzabotto for the ceremony.
“Thank you for coming here today and for honoring our loved ones who are no longer with us”: with her voice cracking with emotion, Anna Rosa Nannetti, one of the survivors of the massacre, greeted Presidents Mattarella and Steinmeier after the commemoration of the fallen in the Bologna Apennines. To which the German president replied, “Thank you for your generosity and for your welcome.”
The notes of the ‘Silence’ and the laying of a wreath in memory of the victims of the massacre, placed among the ruins of the little church of San Martino at Monte Sole: thus began the visit of Presidents Mattarella and Steinmeier to the Bologna Apennines, on the occasion of the official celebrations in Marzabotto. The massacre, carried out by Nazi troops led by Major Walter Reder between September 29 and October 5, 1944, resulted in the deaths of 770 civilians, including women, children, and the elderly in the territories among the municipalities of Marzabotto, Grizzana Morandi, and Monzuno.
The two presidents were accompanied by the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani. For the head of state, this is the second visit to Marzabotto: in 1992, shortly after being re-elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he was the official speaker during the commemoration of the 48th anniversary of the massacres. The last time a president of the Italian Republic officially visited the sites of the massacres alongside a president of the German Republic was in 2002, when, a few days before April 25, Johannes Rau, the head of state of Berlin, decided to go up to Monte Sole with then Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.
Mattarella’s Speech
“We are here to bow our heads together before so many lives cruelly cut short, to fill with the most intense feelings of solidarity those chasms that the inhuman ferocity of Nazifascism has opened in these lands, in these communities. We are here to remember, because memory invokes responsibility. During the Second World War, we touched the bottom of the abyss. The barbarity, the cancellation of all human dignity”: the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in his commemorative speech on the Marzabotto massacre, uses strong words filled with condemnation of the crime perpetrated by German troops. And he clarifies: “Italy, Germany, and Europe were able to rise from that hell, building freedom, peace, democracy, rights, communities, a new security. Our parents, our grandparents did not abandon themselves to resignation. They were able to transform the most unspeakable and inexplicable pain into a generating force. Into a new era. Into a system that, although imperfect, aimed to respect the dignity of every person. It was not easy to rebuild a continent from the material and moral ruins to which Nazism and Fascism had condemned it. It required courage and sacrifice.”
In another passage of his speech, the head of state directly addresses his German counterpart and says: “President Steinmeier, I want to thank you. The Italian Republic thanks you for being here, together with our fellow citizens, with the families of the victims, to share an anniversary so laden with historical and civil meaning. We know your sensitivity: your presence in Civitella Val di Chiana in 2014 (when he was Foreign Minister, Ed.). And, as president, your tribute at the Mausoleum of the fallen of the Fosse Ardeatine, in May 2017. The commemoration years later of the massacres in the Tuscan municipality of Fivizzano, with a touching speech that helped transform that painful day of remembrance into a precious seed of reconciliation, in the sign of a more humane civilization. Allow me to consider today’s event as an additional sign.” And he adds: “Today, your presence, dear President Steinmeier, is an additional push to move forward together in building the future.”
“Nearly eight hundred victims, killed between September 29 and October 5, 1944, in the municipalities of Marzabotto, Monzuno, and Grizzana Morandi. Nearly two hundred children. Marzabotto and Monte Sole are among the most shocking symbols of the annihilation strategy that accompanied the will to dominate, the racial myth, and nationalist oppression, in short, that ideological mix that drove Nazism – and its accomplices, including the Fascist regime – to pursue the catastrophic project of conquering Europe and emptying it of its history,” continued Mattarella.
“On the slopes of Monte Sole, even priests were killed. Don Ubaldo Marchioni was at the altar of Casaglia di Caprara. It was not just a contempt for religion. It was ‘the radical denial of all humanity,’ as Giuseppe Dossetti wrote, a partisan leader, Constituent Assembly member, prominent political figure, who left active politics to found, right at Casaglia, his community of monks, to then rest, a few steps from the destroyed church, in that small cemetery which also became a theater of extermination,” recalls the President of the Republic.
“In these lands, between the Setta and Reno rivers, the largest and most ruthless massacre of civilians among those perpetrated in our country during the war took place. These lands experienced the terrorism of the SS and the fascist black brigades. There were no military reasons that could justify such cruelty,” the head of state emphasizes.
“Why? Why all this? Can we, must we forget? We keep asking ourselves as we walk through these places, stopping before the memorials. The questions penetrate our consciences, failing to provide an exhaustive, definitive answer, rather signaling an unresolved unease. ‘It happened, therefore it can happen again,’ Primo Levi warned us. It can happen if we forget,” warns Sergio Mattarella in his speech.
“But today, the ongoing conflicts, the places of suffering where international humanitarian law finds no application, sharply remind us of the responsibility not to be blind, nor asleep, nor forgetful. We must never forget, even if we struggle to understand. Or perhaps, to quote Levi again: ‘What has happened cannot be understood, indeed, must not be understood, because to understand is almost to justify’” specifies the head of state, who then adds: “We are wrong if we think that racism, antisemitism, aggressive nationalism, the will to supremacy, are a thing of the past that does not belong to us. What happens at the borders of our European Union sounds like a severe warning. The ghosts of horror have not left history.”
“Here lies the reason for the secular pilgrimage to these places, sources of our current civil coexistence, a perennial reminder of human follies. Here are the reasons why Presidents Einaudi, Pertini, Scalfaro on the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre, Ciampi together with German President Rau, wanted to come here. To solemnly reaffirm: never again,” recalls Mattarella.
“Marzabotto and Monte Sole are cornerstones of the Italian Republic. Eighty years after those tragic days, we now feel more acutely that Marzabotto and Monte Sole are symbols and foundations of the whole of Europe, proof of our common destiny which, together, in recent days, in Berlin as in Bonn and Cologne, we have confirmed we want to choose,” the President of the Republic continues, adding that “on this day, in the presence of President Steinmeier, we can affirm, with the words spoken by President Rau in 2002, that Marzabotto has become a place that no longer separates Germans and Italians but unites them.”
We choose the destiny “of a Europe that does not renounce, and indeed wants to develop its values, its civilization, its law, based on the primacy of the person. Thus we will contribute to a Europe of peace, founded on the values that were denied here with immense bloodshed. That Europe of the people and not of the will to power and supremacy of any state. That of the European Union, a great space of freedom in the world. To this Europe, Germans and Italians contribute together.”
80th anniversary of the massacre of Monte Sole and Marzabotto with Presidents Mattarella and Steinmeier, September 29, 2024 (lapresse)
The Massacre
Victims of roundups, rooted out in a relatively large territory made up of small villages, parishes, inns, and shops: many remained buried for months and only after the end of the war did they come to terms with the horror: the Marzabotto massacre, perpetrated by Nazi troops led by Major Walter Reder between September 29 and October 5, 1944, resulted in the deaths of 770 civilians, including women, children, and the elderly in the territories among the municipalities of Marzabotto, Grizzana Morandi, and Monzuno, in the Bologna Apennines.
The Monte Sole massacre, often called the Marzabotto massacre, is today remembered as the most heinous and of the largest scale against the civilian population that occurred in Western Europe during World War II. Terrible stories unfold in a delicate phase of the conflict when, in the autumn of ’44, Allied troops were advancing up the peninsula threatening to breach the Gothic Line, i.e., the Nazi-fascist defenses on the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines.
The history, a ‘planned massacre’, recalls shootings, burning houses, atrocious violence, decapitated elders, raped and murdered women, children thrown alive into the flames. The youngest victim, Valter Cardi, a newborn just fourteen days old.
For our head of state, this is the second visit to Marzabotto: in 1992, shortly after being re-elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he was the official speaker during the commemoration of the 48th anniversary of the massacres. More than twenty years have passed since another president of the Republic officially visited the sites of the Nazi-fascist massacre alongside a German President. In 2002, a few days before April 25, Johannes Rau, the German president, decided to go up to Monte Sole with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, a gesture of reconciliation more than fifty years after the massacre.