The Cumiana Massacre. An Outline.
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The Cumiana Massacre. An Outline.
The Cumiana Massacre. The Prologue.
From the autumn of 1943, Cumiana was at the centre of an active partisan presence. This intensified over the winter, favoured by the particular nature of the terrain, halfway between the high mountains and the large city. The hamlets situated at higher altitude offered refuge and protection to several dozen "rebels" – as the patriots were called in the records of the Salò authorities – including the band led by Silvio Geuna, a former officer of the Julia Division and future Christian Democrat MP, and those of commanders Giulio and Franco Nicoletta, Sergio De Vitis, Nino Criscuolo and Carlo Asteggiano. Attacks were carried out against German convoys, local Gnr (Republican National Guard) garrisons, grain collection depots, and members of the Pfr (Republican Fascist Party). The precarious state of public order worried the military and political leadership of the Italian Social Republic, who, in the spring of 1944, attempted to regain the initiative by launching a series of anti-partisan counteroffensives from Turin.
The Cumiana Massacre. The Event.
At dawn on 30 March 1944, substantial units of the 7th Battalion of the Armed Militia – the so-called Italian SS – arrived in Cumiana: around a hundred men in total, commanded by German officers, who had been quartered for a few days at the Agricultural Institute of Cascine Nuove, 7 km from the village centre, for a period of training. This marked the beginning of a sweeping raid that led to the arrest of around seventy people (some would be released the following day, others deported to Germany). This was an operation planned since the middle of the month, when the Gnr's Regional Inspectorate for Piedmont had requested action along the Rivoli-Avigliana and Piossasco-Cumiana routes against the "rebels" who were very active in that area. Perhaps overestimating the partisan forces (in its request, the Gnr Inspectorate spoke of a "rebel group equipped with numerous automatic weapons and several artillery pieces"), the SS limited their movements to the lower valley and did not advance towards the hamlets of Moncalarda and Verna, where, until a month earlier, the partisans of the "Nino-Carlo" band had their bases. In the evening, the Militia unit stopped to garrison Cumiana, leaving around forty men in the village. The following day, however, the raid did not continue, and the SS limited themselves to forcing one of the arrested men, Cesare Mollar, to transport the municipality's food rations with his own truck, stopping in the village to guard them. During the night between 31 March and 1 April, a truck belonging to the Giustino company, requisitioned by the "Nino-Carlo" band, passed through Cumiana on its way to the grain collection depot at Volvera, where supplies had been set aside for weeks for the partisans. The SS checkpoint forced the two partisans on board to flee: one hid in the bed of the Chisola stream, the other made his way up towards La Colletta, halfway between Cumiana and Giaveno, and raised the alarm among his comrades.
The presence of the SS in Cumiana signalled an intent to control the area that worried the partisans, because it made impassable the routes towards the Pinerolo area, which were essential for raids onto the plain, where there were depots and grain stores, since the other routes were controlled by the Gnr garrisons of Avigliana and Sangano. Meeting at first light, the partisan leaders decided on an action for the following morning. Bartolomeo Romano transported around sixty men in three successive trips, using a vehicle requisitioned for the purpose: there were elements of the "Nino-Carlo" and "Nicoletta" bands and a substantial group from the "De Vitis" band, with its commander and his two deputies, Pietro Curzel "Vecio" and Sandro Magnone. Lieutenant Nino and Franco Nicoletta were also present. His brother Giulio, future commander of all the Val Sangone formations, who had been wounded in the back a few weeks earlier during an action in Trana, did not take part in the attack. Having verified the strength of the garrison (around forty SS men, scattered between Piazza Vecchia, Via Giaveno and Via Chisola), the partisans decided on an encircling manoeuvre: Sergio De Vitis's group, passing through the fields behind the cemetery, reached the square via Via del Mulino; Franco Nicoletta's group prepared to attack from the direction of Giaveno; Lieutenant Nino's group occupied the houses adjoining the square in order to open fire from the windows. De Vitis's men had not yet completed their encircling route when the group positioned in the houses of Piazza Vecchia noticed that many SS men were boarding a truck ready to depart. Seeing the favourable situation, they decided to attack. The clash, which broke out in front of the Balbo delicatessen, was brief but extremely violent. The SS reacted by taking cover behind the truck and trying to regroup for a counterattack, but the arrival of Franco Nicoletta's and Sergio De Vitis's men forced them to surrender: while a captain managed to withdraw among the houses with a small platoon, the bulk of the garrison – thirty-two Italian SS men and two German non-commissioned officers – surrendered as prisoners. In the half-hour of fighting, the Nazi-fascists suffered nineteen wounded, one of whom would die that same day at the hospital in Pinerolo; among the partisans, Andrea Gaido, aged 23, from Carmagnola, and Lillo Moncada, a Sicilian from the "Nicoletta" band, were killed. The German reprisal was not long in coming. At two o'clock in the afternoon of 1 April, a few hours after the clash in Piazza Vecchia, Cumiana was occupied by German and Republican units brought in from the barracks of Pinerolo and Turin: the houses from which the partisans had opened fire were set alight with flamethrowers. While the houses burned, the Germans combed the village inch by inch, taking all the men hostage: around one hundred and fifty people were gathered at the Salesian college of Cascine Nuove, where the SS had their command post.
The Cumiana Massacre. The Epilogue.
Faced with this emergency, the community was left alone. The mayor, Giuseppe Durando, had fled Cumiana a few weeks earlier, after an attempt by the partisans to capture him. The only assistance the community received came from the clergy: the parish priest, Don Felice Pozzo, and his assistant priests worked hard to contain the fire, helped by women and some boys, while the Salesian brothers distributed bread among the hostages crowded into the college's stables. The threat to shoot the hostages if the thirty-four prisoners were not returned spread on the morning of 2 April, after the partisans had repelled a German thrust into the Val Sangone at Pontepietra (Giaveno). Cumiana's local doctor, Michelangelo Ferrero, was officially tasked with mediation. The parish priest, Don Felice Pozzo, went with him up to Forno di Coazze. The negotiations were not simple, because the bands of the valley had no unified command, and the decision had to emerge from discussion among all the commanders. At Forno, the leaders gathered for a discussion that lasted until ten in the evening: present were Franco and Nino Crisciuolo, Carlo Asteggiano, Sergio De Vitis, Franco Nicoletta, Eugenio Fassino, Federico Tallarico, naval lieutenant Paventi, Rinaldo Baratta, Cordero di Pamparato, Costantino Somaglino, Pietro Curzel and Sandro Magnone. Giulio Nicoletta was absent, having remained further up in the mountain shelters, still convalescing. The Germans' conditions were peremptory: immediate return of the men captured on 1 April, together with the truck and individual weapons. The request was rejected, and the mediators returned to Cumiana, where they received from Lieutenant Anton Renninger, commander of the unit, a repetition of the previous ultimatum and, after further fruitless mediation attempts, the final conditions: the hostages would be shot if, by 6:00 pm, a delegated commander did not come forward to settle the terms of the handover. Discussion among the partisans was heated, and even Giulio Nicoletta, summoned by his brother, came down to Forno to lend his contribution. Around 3:00 pm a vote was taken, and the majority favoured the exchange. Dr Ferrero's maroon Ardita set off again, now with Giulio Nicoletta as part of the delegation, but the Germans did not wait for the outcome of the negotiations. Perhaps on the orders of the commander of the Turin SS police, Captain Alois Schmidt, around two o'clock in the afternoon fifty-eight men chosen at random from among the hostages were marched towards the village. In the field beside the Riva di Caia farmstead, at sunset, the massacre began. While the Italian SS, rifles raised, prevented any attempt to escape, Sergeant Rokita took the hostages in groups of three, led them behind the corner of the farmhouse, and shot them dead one after another with a 9mm Luger. Drunk on cognac, the non-commissioned officer continued the executions: the schoolteacher Luigi Losano survived by shouting, in broken German, "I am not from Cumiana," and taking advantage of his executioner's hesitation to take refuge in the farmhouse cellar; another man, Vittorio Chiantore, was spared because the weapon jammed at the moment of firing; yet another, the cobbler Pietro Mollar, managed to hide under a staircase. The massacre proceeded methodically through seven rounds, until one of the hostages, Vincenzo Ambrosio, a hardware merchant, fell backwards in view of the survivors, who understood what was happening and attempted to flee. The Italian SS also fired on the fugitives, and of the fifty-eight hostages dragged to the Riva di Caia farmstead, fifty-one lay dead by the time Dr Ferrero's car, having passed through Bruino and Piossasco, reached Cumiana, an hour after the massacre. Nicoletta met Lieutenant Renninger at the station hotel; only after much hesitation did Renninger inform him that the sentence against the civilians had already been carried out. The partisan commander did not want to believe the words of Renninger's interpreter, but the tears of Dr Ferrero and the parish priest, who arrived at that moment, confirmed that the tragedy had indeed taken place. Nicoletta stood frozen, then unleashed a string of insults at the German officer: "You are criminals! You have flooded Europe with blood, but in that blood you will drown… I cannot now negotiate the dead with the living, I must return to camp to hear what the other commanders think." Renninger did not reply: he merely said that he had received orders to shoot the other civilians held in custody as well, if the partisans did not free the captured soldiers. The meeting ended shortly afterwards, outside the inn: the two sides agreed to meet again the following day, Tuesday 4 April. The next morning, Nicoletta went down to Cumiana again but was informed that the negotiations would continue in Pinerolo, directly with General Peter Hansen. In Pinerolo, at the Hotel Campana, the SS command headquarters, the meeting was tense, but at a certain point the general showed a degree of reasonableness and, taking commander Nicoletta aside, negotiated with him without intermediaries, even using phrases in Latin to make himself understood.
By the end of the morning, an agreement was reached: the militiamen would be released the following day, at the outskirts of Cumiana, along with the truck and the rifles (rendered unusable, however), and immediately afterwards the Germans would free the hostages. On 5 April, the thirty-four prisoners were brought to Cumiana. Having learned of the massacre, some did not wish to return to the ranks of the Militia, saying they had volunteered only to avoid being left to starve in labour camps in Germany. But all had to be handed back. In the evening, the civilians held at Cascine Nuove were also freed. On orders of the German command, the dead were buried in a mass grave. A month later, on 3 May, they were exhumed by a squad of prisoners from Turin's Le Nuove prison, escorted by a unit of Italian SS. The bodies were sprayed with acids and caustic substances to make them unrecognisable, and were then buried in a deeper grave. For Cumiana, the episode ended with fifty-one victims, forty-five orphans, thirty-three widows, and almost half the village burned down.
Anton Renninger, who after the war became an executive in the food industry, was brought to trial by the military court of Turin in 1999. He did not appear at the trial and died on 6 April 2000 in the city of Erlangen, near Nuremberg, where he had lived undisturbed for decades. (m.c.)