The War Story Of A Hill Top Villiage

Holly writes:
Day 41

Ahh, hill top towns, gotta love them. Yes, everyday it's a new one, yet they are so similiar in architecture, churches and thick old walls. Today's choice was Arezzo. This big town is special because it's church has one of the top renaissance frescoes in Italy. Frescoes are paintings on walls. the paintings were ruined and tell the story of Adam, Eve and Christ.

In the town we sat sat down and ate some delllllllicious Italian pasteries. Dad had a custard horn, mum a coffee cake, James two donuts stuck together filled with custard, Emma a choccy filled biscuit and I had a crispy pastry filled with icing, chocolate chips and sliced alamods. It's a very traditional Italian pastry called cannello. Very yummy.

Next we wandered through the streets looking for a shop with an Italy top for James. After two disapointments the bells rang for 1 o'clock. We found some nice pizza and sat down in a park.

As we were driving home we spotted an arch, and the closer we got we realiased it was a war grave. We stopped and had a look. We realised that it was in fact a Commonwealth war grave, with 27 New Zealanders buried there. Some from Auckland, Dunedin and Hawkes Bay. After driving for a bit more and having some gelato we continued our way home.

Whoosh, our house went flying past. But instead of turning around we continued on the road leading up hill to a town (San Pancrazio) Dad had seen before. He wanted to go there to see the the view of the valley. After a look at the view an elderly man walked over keen to show them the museum.  He spoke no English but was insistent they come and look and proceeded to give an interesting story of the village...

The man was only 6 months old and it was nearing the end of the war,  Italy had changed sides from the Germans to the Allies. Germany was not very happy. In the area a handful of germans had been killed by the resistance. So they wanted justice. The Germans arrived in his town at 5:30 in the morning. They rounded all the men, woman and children into a field and robbed them of their goods.

Then they took the women and children into the square and massacred the men. They had conserved a section of wall with three bullet holes. The priest was the first man to be killed and the highest bullet hole was mde by the one bullet through his head. The other two holes were some more unfortunate men. After they had killed the men they burned the bodies and destroyed the town. 71 people were killed 53 of them men.

One man only seven years old had a story on the wall of the museum telling of how his younger brother was stabbed with a bayonet. The German then turned around and said to his mother,
"This is what will happen to you if you don't give information"  His mother refused. She was then stripped of her clothes and killed. After that terrible day the women had to rebuild their town from scratch because almost all was destroyed.  The owner of the place the bodies were killed refused to let the bodies be taken for burial. Many presumed it was done out of fear of the Germans coming back.

After all was explained we thanked him and left. But I think this will be a story we will definately remember.