67 years ago one of the most horrendous atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in Italy took place in Rome. The ‘Fosse Ardeatine massacre’ was a mass execution carried out 24 March 1944 by Nazi German occupation troops during the Second World War as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day in central Rome.
On 24 March 1944, after a partisan attack in via Rasella where 33 soldiers of the Bozen battalion died, the Nazi occupation troops in Rome, under the command of gen. Maetzler, ordered colonel Kappler to retaliate by executing 10 Italians for every German soldier killed. A total of 335 Italian hostages were taken, composed of civilians (including Jews from the local community) who were casually picked up on the city streets, Italian prisoners of war (up to General rank), previously captured partisans and some inmates from Roman prisons. The massacre was perpetrated without prior public notice in what was then a little-frequented rural suburb of the city, inside the tunnels of the disused quarries near the Via Ardeatina.
The bodies of the victims were placed in piles. German military engineers set explosives to seal the caves and hide the atrocity. They remained summarily buried and abandoned for over a year inside the caves. They were eventually found, exhumed and given proper burial only after our capital city was liberated by the Allies in 1945. Subsequently, the Cave Ardeatine became a National Monument and a Memorial Cemetery open daily to visitors to remember and honour the victims. Never forget the atrocities of the past to prevent them in the future.
