From Terror to Reconciliation

Francesco Pirini is one of the few to have survived the massacre in Marzabotto. "Go and hide in the woods," his mother said, when she saw the burning houses below in the valley and the approaching German troops.

Pirini ran to a hill on the edge of the village opposite the church, and watched as women, children, and the elderly were forced out of their homes. He was 17.

"Shortly after, I saw them bring all the people into the church that was right before my eyes," Pirini said. "I thought they were bringing them there so that they could go back and ransack the houses undisturbed. But no. One of the Nazi soldiers threw a hand grenade through the window of the church. There was a terrible explosion from inside. I heard the screams of the people trapped in there, screams that only slowly died away."

The Germans had locked 26 women, 20 children and two old people inside the church. Some died immediately in the explosion, but others died slowly and painfully.

In the neighboring village of Casaglia, around 50 people were driven into the cemetery by the Nazis, forced to line up according to size, and then shot down with machine guns. Among those in the cemetery was Pirini's sister, who survived because the bullets only hit her legs.

"That was her salvation," remembers Pirini. "She fell to the ground, and the others fell on top of her. She didn't move, and for a whole day, she stayed buried under the mound of corpses. The next day, when the soldiers had gone, a farmer emerged from his hiding place in the woods, looking for his family. Everyone from his family was dead, but my sister heard him, and called for help. The farmer pulled the dead bodies off her, and in this way, she survived."

Preying on the weak

The massacre in the community around Marzabotto, south of Bologna, was the biggest war crime committed by the Germans in western Europe. According to official figures by the troops' leaders, 780 people were killed.

"The majority of those killed were women, children, the elderly and invalids," said Lutz Klinkhammer of the German Historical Institute in Rome. "There were hardly any young, able-bodied men there, which shows that it wasn't about fighting a band of resistors. It was about eradication. The soldiers were carrying out a kind of 'scorched earth' policy."

After the war, Marzabotto stood as a symbol of Nazi terror. But over the years, it has changed into a place symbolizing reconciliation. This process was underscored two years ago, when former German President Johannes Rau (photo) visited Marzabotto to apologize for the Nazi's crimes.

For ten years now, the area where the massacre occurred has been turned into a historical park. Francesco Pirini is one of the guides who shows school groups -- including students from Germany -- around the sites of the soldiers' crimes. His message to them: Never again should people allow themselves to be drawn into fascist, racist ideologies that disrespect human rights.

The power of ideology

"The ideology that influenced people then was the breeding ground for the massacre," Pirini says. "The Nazi ideology turned people into murderers. But that's not something that we should only judge the Germans on. In Italy too, terrible crimes were committed in the name of a fascist ideology, just as they were in the name of communism and Leninism. People become little more than animals when they allow themselves to be driven by certain ideologies."

In the historical park of Marzabotto, the German state of Hesse is helping to finance a school that teaches peace. Each summer, German and Italian youth meet here with young Israelis and Palestinians. It's the school's hope that the Germans and Italians can be a living example of how reconciliation is possible, even after a tragedy as horrific as the massacre of Marzabotto.