[THE SLAUGHTER]

After the slaughter

From the report of Don Giuseppe Evangelisti

Immagine:

« The more shocking scene was what happened in the church’ square: in its centre a multitude of corpses still had the frizzling flesh; to one side there was a child of about three years old, having every part of the body inflated and chapped by the fire, his arms was stiff and raised as if he was asking help; all around the background made by burning houses; the open door of the church let to see inside a big bonfire made by the pews and the furniture; in the air the stanch of roasted flesh, which was diffusing all around the valley, it was taking the breath away.

The corpses were buried the 14th of August by about thirty voluntaries came from La Culla. It was a very hard and difficult work, especially for the high risk of mortal infections caused by the stings of the flies. We hadn’t faces guard and either disinfectants, we only had a bottle of alcohol and some cotton.
Here there was also an event which affected all of us: among those corpses there was a numerous family, the Tucci’s; the father was a naval officer, came from Foligno, moved to Sant’Anna with his family during the war. The family consisted of 8 children, all of them younger than 15 years old, and their mother. While their hole was digging, Tucci’s father came there running and crying with pain; his intention was to flung himself in the middle of those corpses: “Mee too with them!”, he shot. We had to hold him until he calm. He remained some days as he was crazy.
The corpses on the church’square were 132, 32 of them were children. Further 8 corpses were behind the bell tower, maybe they were the men taken away by the Nazis from the bottom of the valley, as help to carry the munitions ».