Pietransieri and Collelongo massacres

The Pietransieri and Collelongo massacres took place in two Italian villages during the Second World War , in Pietransieri, a district of Roccaraso , on November 21, 1943 and in Collelongo on December 28, 1943, both in the Italian region of Abruzzo in the province L'Aquila lie.

prehistory

The two villages were in the immediate vicinity of the so-called Gustav Line , a German line of defense in central Italy during World War II , which was supposed to block the advance of the Allied forces. After the Allies landed with Operation Avalanche in Salerno, southern Italy, as part of their invasion of Italy on September 9, 1943 , the German Wehrmacht withdrew to the north on the Gustav Line, which was about 100 kilometers south of Rome .

Pietransieri massacre

The 1st Parachute Division , soldiers from a field hospital and the 1st Battalion of the SS Police Regiment 20 of the SS Police Division were supposed to evacuate the population from the area in front of Cassino . After the population living there followed the evacuation order after October 30, 1943, except for about 200 people until mid-November, the soldiers changed their approach after November 15, 1943 when the evacuation was ordered in a 15-kilometer-wide strip along the main battle line and coast has been. The population was harassed and several people were shot on November 17th and 18th, 1943. But there were definitely soldiers and units who did not take up arms.

The actual massacre took place on November 21, 1943. Four to six soldiers of III. Who was in Pietransieri. Battalions of the Paratrooper Regiment 1, commanded by Major Karl-Heinz Becker, shot 119 people who they found on four farms. 60 people died on one of the farms alone. The buildings were blown up by mines and destroyed. The total number of victims of this massacre was 125 people.

Collelongo massacre

The next massacre in this area occurred on December 28, 1943. 42 people were killed in Collelongo who had left their homes in Cardito because of the fighting and had settled in caves in the front area. These refugees were initially tolerated by the 305th Infantry Division stationed there. This was withdrawn a week before the massacre and replaced by the 305 Mountain Infantry Regiment of the 5th Mountain Division . The responsibility for this massacre could not yet be clearly assigned to a unit that drove people out of their holes in the ground and then killed them with machine gun volleys. Oral tradition says that it was a military unit that came to this area shortly before the massacre.

literature

Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . (Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2008.)
Lutz Klinkhammer : Stragi naziste in Italia. Donzelli, Roma 1997, ISBN 88-7989-339-4 .
Gerhard Schreiber : German war crimes in Italy - perpetrators, victims, prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 .

Individual evidence

^ Carlo Gentile : Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 , pp. 110/111.
↑ Pietransieri Roccaraso 11/21/1943 (Italian), on Straginazifasciste. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
^ Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 112/113.

[1] Carlo Gentile : Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 , pp. 110/111.

[2] Pietransieri Roccaraso 11/21/1943 (Italian), on Straginazifasciste. Retrieved November 2, 2019.

[3] Carlo Gentile: Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in Partisan War: Italy 1943–1945 . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2012, ISBN 978-3-506-76520-8 . Pp. 112/113.