The violin from Cervarolo

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Movie
German title The violin from Cervarolo
Original title Il Violino di Cervarolo
Logo Violino JPG.JPG
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 2012
length 75 minutes
Rod
Director Nico Guidetti, Matthias Durchfeld
synchronization

Subtitles German, English

The narrative documentary Die Geige aus Cervarolo is about a war crime in occupied Italy , the Cervarolo massacre , when German Wehrmacht troops committed numerous civilians in the village of Cervarolo in the Reggian Apennines in March 1944 .

action

The project “The violin from Cervarolo” was realized in close cooperation with the current residents of the village, including family members of the victims of the massacre. The plot begins with the story of a violin, which connects one of the families of the village with the bloody events. It belonged to the well-known musician of the village Virgilio Rovali (born in Cervarolo on December 22nd, 1922, died on September 22nd in Reggio nell'Emilia ), who left the instrument with his mother before he was drafted into the army because he used to play his violin there Believes security. Despite the massacre and the subsequent fire, which destroyed part of the village, the violin was found intact. After sixty-eight years, Virgilio's son, Italo Rovali, is trying to clear up what was going on and to find those responsible.

Italo Rovali and Matthias Durchfeld in front of one of the burned down houses in Cervarolo.
The threshing floor of Cervarolo, site of the massacre.

The historical event

After the massacre of Monchio , Susano and Costrignano , which was carried out on March 18 as a repression against the presence of partisan groups in the Modenese Apennines, units of the parachute armored division "Hermann Göring" combed the area around the area on March 20, 1944 Cervarolo village. When they arrived in the village, together with two Reggians hundreds of the fascist Guardia Nazionale Repubblicana, they took 24 residents of the community out of their homes, gathered them in the central threshing floor of the village and shot them there. The soldiers then set many houses on fire. This event marked the end of an operation with more than 150 civilian casualties from various villages in the Reggian and Modenese Apennines .

judgment

For decades, the files on the Cervarolo massacre, along with numerous other reports , remained hidden in the so-called “ Cupboard of Shame ”, in a storage room of the Palazzo Cesi , the seat of the Military Prosecutor of Rome. They were found there in 1994 and started a wave of lawsuits. After four years of preliminary investigation in the years after 2005, the trial of the massacre in Cervarolo in 2009 was opened in Verona , also thanks to the tireless efforts of Italo Rovali .

The trial began on November 11, 2009 with the indictment of six members of the Panzer Division Hermann Göring and was expanded to include six on March 14, 2010. Three defendants died during the trial. The trial came to an end on July 6, 2011 with the sentencing in the absence of seven former German soldiers to life imprisonment and two acquittals. The convicts were jointly responsible for the war crimes in Cervarole, Monchio, Mommio , Monte Morello and Vallucciole . The convicts appealed against the verdict and three of the seven life sentences were overturned in the second instance. Against this, the public prosecutor appealed and on December 2, 2014 the court of cassation overturned the judgment of the second instance in the third instance and finally confirmed the life imprisonment from the first instance for six of the convicted; the seventh convict, Ferdinand Osterhaus, died in 2014. The defendants were defended by public defenders or public defenders, but never appeared in the courtroom themselves.

The trial also led to the surviving residents of the village - accompanied and supported by the ANPI Reggio Emilia and the Istoreco History Institute - who gave detailed testimony as contemporary witnesses in the military court of Verona. The judgment recognized them as victims the right to individual compensation from the German state. The Federal Republic of Germany then appealed to the highest court of the United Nations and invoked state immunity. The judges in The Hague upheld the Federal Republic with their decision of February 3, 2012.

However, on October 22nd, 2014, the Italian Constitutional Court declared the directive (Law No. 5/2013) relating to the judgment of the International Court of Justice on State Immunity to be unconstitutional: it violated the inviolability of human rights and the right to defense. This could rekindle the discussion about the refused compensation payments to the families of the Nazi victims.

Now it remains to be seen whether the claims for compensation will be granted. In view of the prevailing orientation, according to which any form of individual compensation for acts of the Nazi regime is rejected, it will be interesting to see how the German authorities will react in the event of the enforcement of future judgments that uphold the demands.

Film and film music

The film “The violin from Cervarolo” was shown in cinemas in Germany's six cities.

The violin music played in the film is in part traditional music from Emilia-Romagna , but also contains pieces written by Virgilio Rovali himself. For acoustic reasons, the recordings took place in the church of Puianello, with Maestro Emanuele Reverbi playing the violin . An accordion , played by Paolo Simonazzi, is used for the music that can be heard in the final scene on the threshing floor and in front of Virgiolio Rovali's house .

Matthias Durchfeld in an interview with Remo Monti.

Filming

Nico Guidetti filming in Cervarolo.

For the shooting, the film team traveled to all of the 41 days of the trial against the Wehrmacht in Verona and documented the entire process there. All other recordings come from the town of Cervarolo in the Apennines itself, including the apartments and houses of relatives and survivors. All in all, it took over 2 years to record all of the material for the film.

Film tour 2012

In autumn 2012, the film was shown in cinemas on a tour in various German cities and then discussed and discussed with the producers. The aim of the organizers was to create a public awareness of the crimes they committed and their convictions in Italy in the cities of the perpetrators who were still alive.

literature

  • Massimo Storchi, Italo Rovali: Il primo giorno d´inverno. Cervarolo, March 20, 1944 - Una strage nazifascista dimenticata. Reggio Emilia 2010.

Press reviews

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life sentence for former military personnel of the parachute-tank division "Hermann Göring" , on Resistenza . Retrieved October 26, 2019