Two women met for the first time in San Polo; though, in a way, they have met before.
One, Laura Ewert, is the granddaughter of a Nazi executioner. The other, Alessia Donati, is the granddaughter of a Nazi survivor.
Marking the 80th anniversary of the San Polo and San Severo massacres, Laura traveled more than 1,000 kilometers (over 600 miles) from her home in Berlin to visit a monument commemorating the 65 victims in San Polo on Sunday, July 14, offering an apology on the behalf of her grandfather, the man responsible for the atrocity.
The women embraced, putting behind them generations of “sadness, pain and shame.”
“For me it is time to listen, from the testimonies and meetings I want to understand why all this happened, why my grandfather gave the order to shoot,” Laura said in an article by il Fatto Quotidiano. “We live in difficult times with wars underway, and this shows that we are not completely out of danger from the fact that certain moments can be experienced again.”
Starting in San Polo — a hamlet of the Municipality of Arezzo — and continuing on to the villages of Sant’Anna di Stazzema and Monte Sole, Nazi troops retreating Italy in 1944 after the breakdown of their WWII-era Italian alliance left a trail of blood behind them. German soldiers of the 274th Grenadier Regiment of the 94th Infantry Division blazed through Tuscany, committing the San Polo massacre just two days before Arezzo would be declared liberated.
Heading this regiment was Colonel Wolf Ewert, Laura’s grandfather. On July 14, 1944, Col. Ewert ordered for captured partisans and civilians to be lined up and shot in the back of their heads. In the gardens of Villa Gigliosi, 48 of the victims were forced to dig their own graves, which were later blown up with dynamite. Another 16 were rounded up and killed in the nearby town of San Severo. According to witnesses, a local innkeeper protesting against the non-payment of a bill was also a casualty of the massacre. Of the 65 total victims, there were eight women, eight elderly and one newborn.
Col. Ewert died before investigations by the military prosecutor of La Spezia began. After only having recently learned of the story of her grandfather, Laura, a journalist, placed a bouquet of white flowers at the memorial stone for the victims at the site of the massacre. She addressed the community after a mass in the parish church Pieve di San Polo.
“It is difficult to speak to you today under the weight of the past that binds us,” she said in an article in La Nazione. “Today I am here with you to keep alive the memory of those terrible crimes. My grandfather and others are responsible for these. My generation grew up in a peaceful Europe. We are realizing how fragile this peace can be. I firmly believe that meeting and dialogue are a cure. I care deeply about the desire to understand, recognize the other and his suffering. Let’s talk together about pain, it must serve to remind us of the importance of protecting peaceful coexistence with all our strength.”
Also present at the commemoration were local authorities, associations, and politicians such as Vincenzo Ceccarelli, the regional councilor, and Antonio Mazzeo, the president of the Regional Council of Tuscany. (Kyla Pehr)
