On January 27, 1945, the Soviet army entered the Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz, in Poland, and liberated more than 7,000 remaining prisoners, who were mostly ill and dying. It is estimated that at minimum 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945; of these, at least 1.1 million were murdered.
I do not know much about Auschwitz apart from what you read in the history books or see in the documentaries on TV, but in this International Holocaust Remembrance Day I’d like to tell you the story of my uncle who wasn’t a Jew, or an homosexual or a gypsy or a Communist (the usual victims of the Nazis murderous cruelty, but just a young man who crossed the Nazis path).
In 1943, with the Allied landing in the South of Italy, Mussolini was deposed, put in prison and on 8th September 1943 General Badoglio signed the armistice with the Allied. But unfortunately the war was not over yet. The Italian territory was occupied by Nazis soldiers who now were enemies.
The Nazis freed Mussolini and established an independent Fascist state in the North of Italy. Groups of partisans were already formed in the North of Italy to fight the Fascists in Italy but now they found themselves in the middle of a civil war. The only way they could survive and fight against Nazis and Fascists was to fight with the support of the Allied army who was already in Italy fighting the Nazis.
My mum’s brother, Uncle Giovanni, was just 17 when he started helping the partisans as a messenger between them and the Allied. He had managed to escape the enrolment in the Italian army as he was just 14 when the war had started. But living in the countryside of Monferrato, in the North-West of Italy, nor far from France, was almost impossible not to be involved in the Resistance movement, unless you were a fascist of course. My mum’s parents were farmers and they were subject to the continuous requisitions of their harvest and animals by the Nazi-Fascists who would come regularly to get as much as they could to feed their army leaving the farmers poor and hungry. Uncle Giovanni had many friends among the partisans and having an old bike he was able to run errands for them. He looked like a harmless young boy, so at first nobody suspected of him. Unfortunately after a few months he was betrayed by one of his own friends and reported to the Fascist police. He was taken away from his family and without any trial was sent to an “Arbeitskamp” in Germany (now France), called Natzweiler-Struthof.
He will never forget those long two years and even now that he is 86 years old, those days are the ones he remembers more vividly. Life in the prisoners’ camp was terrible. As most prisoners were resistance fighters, the Nazis were particularly horrible to them. Some of them had been deported without the knowledge of their relatives. They were called “Nacht und Nebel” (night and fog) prisoners as it was as if they had disappeared into the night and fog. They were not allowed to receive and write letters. The food was scarce and the work very hard. They used to work in the granite quarry nearby and those who were too weak or too ill to work were sent to gas chamber or to the crematorium. Uncle Giovanni worked for a while in the quarry but got ill and was sent to the infirmary, although, being considered a partisan, he wouldn’t have not been allowed to be there. Fortunately he recovered and was sent to work in the camp kitchen. This was what saved him, as he managed to survive the meagre camp meals by eating the potato peels from the Nazi officials’ leftovers.
Also the drinking water was not enough. The prisoners had to drink rain water and melted snow that they collected in large bowls and even drain water which often made them ill. When in 1945 the Americans finally came to free France from the Nazi occupation, they also freed the Natzweiler-Struthof camp and found prisoners who looked like skeletons. Most of them had a long journeys home and although Uncle Giovanni was in very weak health conditions he managed to get home to Italy alive. When his mother saw him arriving she didn’t recognized him. She had thought him dead and couldn’t believe her eyes when he came back safe from the concentration camp.
(My Uncle Giovanni now, 86 a few days ago)
