Giuseppe Millozzi
Our first evening in Servigliano, Giuseppe Millozzi expressed
interest in hearing my father's story. I hoped that he could help find more
specific information about my dad's whereabouts and the family who sheltered
him. He agreed to meet with us on our last day in the region. After getting a
bit lost we arrived right on time for our greatly anticipated meeting. Giuseppe has written a master’s thesis on Camp
59 and has actually stayed with Keith Killby in London while doing his
research. He very kindly offered us a selection of tea, coffee, biscuits and cake,
and we were introduced to Carl, the distinguished looking man from the cafe in Monte
San Martino, who, as it turns out, is an American from Worcester Massachusetts,
but emigrated to Italy to live in the area where his family members came from
originally. Giuseppe told us that Carl translated all the speeches for yesterday’s
award ceremony from Italian into English.
Giuseppe began by telling us that with no family name or
village name and only the photos of the two unknown Italian women, adding
information to what we know would be like “looking for a needle in a haystack”.
(We were impressed with his use of this English idiom.) But he said he would do
his best and thanked us for the enlarged photos. I shared two stories my dad
always told about his time in hiding, hoping that they might prove useful in
future:
Shortly after his escape from
Servigliano there was an earthquake. Wikipedia gives the date as October 4,
1943, and Keith Killby also refers to the event in his book. Everyone ran out
of the house leaving the baby inside in their haste. My dad, without hesitation,
ran back to fetch the child, and the family, especially the grandmother, were immensely
grateful.
On another occasion family members sent my dad down to the
cellar to fetch some special wine for the priest’s anticipated visit. When he
did not return in a timely manner, a family member was sent to investigate. It
seems he became preoccupied with sampling the different wines he found.
Giuseppe asked the name of the priest and since I drew
another blank, thought the above stories would not shed much light.
He did, however, share information about experiences common
to many of the escapees on the night of Sept. 14, 1943 and subsequently until
the Germans moved their front line in June 1944, allowing the Allied soldiers
to leave the area.
What follows is an
edited transcription of the tape recording I made using my smartphone.
There were three camps in southern le Marche – PG 59
Servigliano – PG 70 Fermo, and - PG 53 Sforzacosta Macerata. Sforzacosta and
Fermo camps were formerly industrial sites and they were very big as compared
to Servigliano. For two reasons there was no mass escape in those two camps.
Firstly they were too close to the main cities and the camp commandants thought
it was too dangerous to let the prisoners free, and secondly the people responsible
for the prisoners also thought that the Allies were coming to rescue them. They
were all wrong.
Servigliano, which was the smallest of the three, was a
proper camp because it had served during WWI. It was far from the coast
and near a very small town… The camp commandant was reluctant to let them go,
but the prisoners were determined enough to get away, and they did so thanks to
Captain Derek Millar. The mass escape occurred from Servigliano mostly on the
evening of the 14th of September, six days after the Armistice. We
know that they left at 22 hours 22 minutes, as we have signed documents to this
effect. One of the guards who was in the sentry box told me that in the
moonlight he saw most of the prisoners heading for the hills, that is in the
direction of the Tenna Valley upstream towards the Tenna Valley Spring. For
that reason most of them found themselves in the foothills near Penna San
Giovanni and Monte San Martino the following morning and found a friendly
reception from the contadini, which prompted them to seek a family to quite
literally adopt them. The most daring, however headed south, thinking that they
could reach the Allied lines. Later on, as they got organized, a very few
decided to head for the coast and tried to circumnavigate the front line
via the sea, either to be helped by the secret service or by some
fishermen. Others joined the Partisans on the mountains. But the majority, I
would say 90 percent, stayed with the contadini. It would have been very
dangerous, in the winter either to reach the Partisans or to reach the Allied lines
via the sea.
Now, if you read the chapter in the thesis dealing with life
with the contadini, it will tell you the experience of a few prisoners, which
is common to all. Some of them made themselves useful helping when they could
with farming as many Italian men were at war. Some of them made themselves useful teaching the children,
because the schools weren’t running properly. Nothing was functioning properly
in this country. They seldom moved from village to village. When I say village
I mean the countryside, because they would avoid the towns. They would try to
meet with other prisoners to exchange news how the war was going. Once winter
set in and there was the massive snowfall, there was all the more reason to
stay put and wait for better times. When springtime came there was a lot of
search activity, therefore they might have moved into more savage areas, such
as the bush closer to the mountains. They might have left the family for one or
two weeks, because the farmers knew what was going on and the bush telegraph
worked really well. They would exchange information with other families and the
children would run ahead and warn people and the prisoners what was happening.
It was mostly the Fascists who would raid the houses and send the
prisoners to be collected by the Germans. The Germans were busy fighting
the war in N. Africa, and they used the Italians for other things. In both the
Fermo and Macerata camps I would say 10,000 prisoners at least got shipped to
Germany and had to finish the war in German prison camps. Some 2,000 managed to
escape during the days of the Armistice, the same number as in Servigliano.
Moreover the conditions in Sforzacosta and Fermo were
appalling, because they were factories - no sanitation, no running water. They
were trying to improve them, but once the Armistice came nothing more was done.
Servigliano was better - I don’t mean that there weren’t lice, there were. They
did suffer hunger as well, although for several months the Red Cross managed to
deliver Red Cross parcels..
Now to give you a clue of what I found out, I will leave
this map with you. The prisoners who escaped from Sforzacosta
were hidden in the countryside of Mogliano, Massa Fermana, Montaponi. They got
as far as Montaponi and Montegeorgio. They headed south and many settled in the
hills. San Ginesio was very important. San Ginesio is a huge township, and some
hamlets such as Cereto, which was well hidden above a hill, was a fugitive
paradise, because they could check the main roads from a high hill and know at
a glance whether there were movements of troops. Sarnano as well, I mean
around Sarnano there were safe havens. The people who escaped from
Servigliano hid in Penna San Giovanni, Monte San Martino, Smerillo and Santa
Vittoria in Matenano. All the villages south of the camp were involved -
Amandola, Curnanza, Curetta. Yes, those are hamlets of Servigliano ; Servigliano
is a township. The same thing could be said about Fermo - the
prisoners heading south were hidden in Grottazzolina and Ponzano. Some of them
got as far as Monteleone. Prisoners from these two camps got mixed up
south of here. If you hear about prisoners scattered all over the province, a
minority could be from our camps, but the majority were walking south from
camps in Northern Italy. Out of 80 camps some 80,000 escaped. 80,000 was
the number of POWS in Italian hands at the time of the Armistice. Out of this
80,000, 50,000 were recaptured and taken to Germany. So by the end of September
30,000 men were on the run, most of them headed south, with a minority headed
toward Switzerland. Because Rome was too dangerous, too difficult to hide, the
majority of these people walking south went through the Marche hoping to reach
the Allies, but many stayed here and did what your father did. Therefore we
assume some 10,000 men passed through the Marche, adding to the ones that had
escaped from our camps and it was a very fluctuating situation.
(I asked Giuseppe about the population of Italians who lived
in this area at that time, because now they have lost about 50 percent of
the population here in the villages, although I understand that on the coast
the population has increased. Giuseppe said about 1 ½ million but he is
uncertain and would have to look it up. I told Giuseppe that Concetta said that
even in their house in Smerillo, there were many people living together.
They had large families - lots of children to help. Giuseppe replied that they
needed the muscles of the children to work in the fields. )
Well to conclude, my guess is your father joined a small
group - that was the right number either two or three. They knew that ten
people could not be taken into a family. Also travelling around together they
would be easy to spot, so two to three was the maximum number of prisoners.
So everything fits, but unfortunately he could have been in any village
south from here.
I told Giuseppe that, although I have lost hope of ever
finding the specific family, I wanted to say thank you to him, because
he is the representative of the contadini and without their help, I literally wouldn’t
be here today. I really want my family members to understand that they owe their
existence to these brave people, and that is why I’ve made this pilgrimage to
Le Marche. I asked that he convey my thanks to everybody here, because the
contadini made unbelievable sacrifices after the Armistice. I don’t think most
Americans understand their contribution. My dad was always so positive about
Italy and the Italian people and everything Italian. That was hard for me to
understand as a child, because I knew that he had been in a prison camp in
Italy and that the Italians were supposed to be the enemy, but he never said
anything against Italians, only the Fascists.
We thanked Giuseppe for giving us his time. It was very
meaningful for me and I told him that if he ever comes to Toronto, he has a
place to stay.
Giuseppe replied: “Let us keep in touch.”
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