Bruno Buozzi: Nazi victim who "gave his life for liberty"

"They gave their life for liberty."
The name of a Hungarian Jew, Gabor Adler, alias
Captain John Armstrong, alias Gabriele Bianchi,
was added only in 2007 after his identity--previously
he was known only as "an English spy"--was confirmed.

One of the late tragedies of World War II in Italy was the Germans' assassination of Italian prisoners as the Germans fled north from advancing Allied forces.

One of the most famous of these martyrs, and so they are considered, is Bruno Buozzi, whose name graces streets, piazzas, schools, sports fields and cooperatives throughout Italy.

Buozzi, a trade unionist held prisoner in the infamous SS torture house on via Tasso (now Museo Storico della Liberazione - "Historical Museum of the Liberation"), was killed on June 4, 1944, along with 13 other men, most of them partisans of the "Matteotti Brigade" (Brigate Matteotti), less than 10 miles from the northern gate of Rome.


You can see a small monument to these men on via Cassia, km 14.2, now at the intersection of via Giulio Galli.  We went in search of the monument last year, and found it in a small plot, with cars and scooters whizzing by.  At one time, we had read, there was a grove of trees with the name of a victim on each of 14 trees.  We think we found the grove, but it is barred with fences and gates, and no names are visible.

Why is this particular assassination so memorable?  In part it is because of Buozzi's legacy as a giant among trade union organizers and politicians in the inter-war period; Italy lost an important leader with his death.  Another is for the odd series of events that led to his - and the others' - death.

The monument is tucked beneath some shrubbery on the
very busy via Cassia. The monument is just
above the right tail light of the grey car. 

Buozzi, born near Ferrara, and a machinist in Milan and Turin, was a worker-organizer, and organize he did.  He kept unions together, built them to great stature, negotiated for and among them, and also served as a leading politician in Rome.  Resisting Mussolini's attempts to draw him into the Fascist Party, he ended up in exile in Paris, where he ultimately was captured by the Germans.  He continued his leadership of the unions and the socialist parties while in exile and even in the brief period between the fall of Mussolini and the occupation of Rome by the Germans in 1943.  He was fighting at Porta San Paolo in the brief resistance to the German invasion of Rome in September 1943, and then went underground again.

Even the circumstances of Buozzi's capture in Rome and assassination are murky and make for the stuff of mystery.  It's possible he was betrayed by a young man (not yet old enough to shave, according to the stories) who worked in the Resistance but also for the Germans.

The large memorial/tomb of Buozzi in Rome's Campo Veranno (another
reason we need to return to this most memorable cemetery in Rome). Photo by Luciano Tronati (Feb. 2016)

There were two trucks loaded with prisoners that were to leave the via Tasso prison heading north on June 3, 1944.  One broke down; the men in it were saved.  Buozzi made the decision to go in what turned out to be the functioning truck.  There is a question of why the men ended up dead.  Some evidence points to the Germans wanting to make room for loot.   Then there is the question of who gave the orders to shoot the men in this second truck.  The judicial finger was pointed at SS Erich Priebke, deputy commander of the SS headquarters in via Tasso.  Priebke actually obtained a conviction for libel against the publisher and the historian author of a 1994 article in which he was implicated as the one who ordered the killings.  He was awarded 20 million lire (about $10,000) in damages in 2001, an award overturned in 2005.  Priebke's appeal was dismissed just 7 years ago, in 2010, over 60 years after the event.  Bill wrote about Priebke in 2010, when, having been given a life sentence for his World War II crimes (for which he never repented), he was released from house arrest in Rome--to protests.  He died in 2013, at age 100, in Rome.

The gate blocking the grove, and behind the trees the type of housing now
dominating the area.

The shallow graves of the 14 murdered men were found shortly after their assassination when "peasants" led the Allies to the sites of the graves, not far from via Cassia.  It's hard to imagine "peasants" in this area now, which is basically a suburb of Rome with middle-class housing.  We walked quite a few of the streets in the area, hoping--in vain it turned out--to find more evidence of the massacre.

A room in the via Tasso Historical Museum of the Liberation is dedicated to the murder victims of June 4, 1944.  The via Tasso museum is #3 on RST's Top 40.  It's even easier to visit today, with more didactic materials in English.

Dianne

A monument at Porta San Paolo to the more than
400 people who died trying to prevent the Germans
from entering the city in September, 1943.  Buozzi
was among the fighters who survived.

RST's 700th Post. Holy Cow!

We've been writing this blog for more than eight years, but it remains surprising--no, astonishing--that we have managed to produce 700 posts.  Yes, 700!  If you figure it takes about 8 hours of work to produce one post (some are less, some much more--like days), that amounts to 5600 total hours spent making content.  That's like having a 40-hour-a-week job for almost 3 years.  Yikes!

To celebrate our 700th, we're offering links to some of our most popular posts (those with the most page views, and some others with lots of traffic).  Click on the link to see the original post.

Richard Meier's Jubilee Church.  The all-time page-view champ at over 15,000.  A ways out of town, but worth the trip.  #17 on RST's Top 40.

Europe's Largest Mosque--in Rome.  We may have a lot of Muslim readers, but the building is quite something no matter what religion you are.  Also on RST's Top 40 - at #24. Interestingly, a post we did on Rome's Kebab was also widely seen.

The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A Moral Act or Not?  Philosophy professor Raymond Belliotti examines the ethics of the murder by evaluating it against 7 moral criteria.







Riding a Scooter in Rome.  Actually, RST's post on renting a scooter in Rome was somewhat more popular, but this one's more useful--lots of hard-earned tips about riding a scooter in Rome, should you decide to do it, which you shouldn't.

Italy's Liberation Day: Bella Ciao.  Guest blogger Frederika Randall pulls apart the legendary anthem and examines the history of "Bella Ciao."













 Tracking Elizabeth Taylor.  ET spent some time in Rome, some of it with Richard Burton, while she was making movies.  She's still iconic here, but perhaps less so than Audrey Hepburn, whose image is everywhere.













The 1960 Rome Olympics: An Itinerary.  There's lots to see in Rome related to the 1960 Olympics: the Olympic Village; the Palazzetto dello Sport, where Cassius Clay made his name and reputation; an amazing stadium built by Mussolini where the athletes warmed up.












Garibaldi in Rome.  The darling of Italian unification, Giuseppe Garibaldi fought the French on the Gianicolo and lived to tell about it.












Via Tasso.  To most Romans, via Tasso means "place where the Germans imprisoned and tortured their political enemies," or something like that.  It's not far from the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano, and you can visit, even walk into the cells and read the messages prisoners scrawled on the walls. RST Top 40, #3.

On St. Paul's Path.  Cities have their "named saints," saints special to the city.  Rome has two: Peter and Paul.  Paul brought Christianity to Rome, and was martyred just outside the city.  You can visit the sites and try to feel his presence.

RST Top 40. #3: Via Tasso



The poet Tasso in a mental institution in Ferrara.
Painting by Eugene Delacroix. 

For knowledgeable Romans, via Tasso has two meanings--two, that is, besides the obvious: an unimposing street that runs northwest for 5 blocks from behind the Scala Santa in front of San Giovanni in Laterano.  One of the other meanings, of which we were made aware only recently, by way of Goethe's many references, is the brilliant, influential 16th-century poet Torquato Tasso.  Born in Sorrento, Tasso spent his most productive (and most frustrating) years in Ferrara, where he wrote the lyrical epic Gerusalemme Liberata (1574) and, two years later, was incarcerated in a mental institution, perhaps for conduct that was only intemperate.  He died in Rome in 1595,  a few days before he was to receive from the Pope the "crown of laurels" as the king of poets.

The other meaning of via Tasso is starkly different: the Nazis' political torture prison.  The official name is the Historical Museum of the Liberation--it's open and you can visit-- but what happened here at via Tasso 145 was hardly liberating.  Between September 1943, when the Germans occupied Rome, and June 1944, when the city was liberated by allied armies, the prison on via Tasso--now often called simply "via Tasso"--was the scene of torture, abuse, and death for hundreds of prisoners, among them Jews, partisans, and the innocent.  Late in March, 1944, all the prisoners housed at via Tasso were removed and summarily executed at the Fosse Ardeatine, caves just outside the city.

Via Tasso is a haunting place to visit.  Many of the rooms of the prison now hold exhibits and documents, some of which we have translated from the Italian in Rome the Second Time.  But some of the cells are still there, and there, especially, one can see--and feel--the anguish of those held here.  A reader of a February 5 post on the Fosse Ardeatine sent us these lines (the translation is the reader's, too), scratched by a prisoner into the wall of his cell, returning us to the man Tasso, to his experience as a prisoner, and to the relationship of poetry to the human spirit.

L'anima a Dio
La vita al re
Il cuore alla donna
L'onore per me

My soul to God
My life to the king
My heart to my wife
My honour to myself


Bill

Rome the Second Time Top 40. #12: The Fosse Ardeatine



Cells at the former SS prison on via Tasso

The grounds of the Fosse Ardeatine (Ardeatine Caves) include the caves [photo below] where, in March 1944, the German SS executed 335 Italian men--Jews, partisans, and others--in retaliation for a deadly partisan attack on the occupying German forces in via Rasella, and the haunting cemetery/memorial housing the bodies of all those killed there.  The Fosse Ardeatine are located a few miles south of the Centro on via Ardeatine, but can be easily reached by Bus 218, which has a stop in the city at the corner of Piazza San Giovanni and the wide via Amba Aradam.

Itinerary 6 ("Attack and Reprisal--a Story of Partisans and Nazis") in Rome the Second Time covers the via Rasella bombing and the SS prison on via Tasso, which now is home to the Historical Museum of the Liberation, where some of those killed at the Fosse Ardeatine had been incarcerated.   

The tombs of those killed at the Fosse Ardeatine

A good (Jewish) friend who read Rome the Second Time enjoyed and praised the book but was critical of the space devoted to Italian Fascism and the 1943/44 German occupation of Rome, which produced the Fosse Ardeatine tragedy and the deportation of many of the city's Jews to concentration camps.  We think the material is not only appropriate but vital.  More than half a century later, these issues and events--Mussolini and Fascism, the ugly Italian campaign, the role of the partisans, the inhumanity of the Germans, the occupation of the city after the withdrawal of Italy from the war, the deportation of Italian Jews--continue to resonate with and to divide Italians, shaping their social relationships, politics, foreign policies, and art and architecture, well into the 21st century.  You can't tell the players without a scorecard, and you can't fully understand contemporary Italy without knowing something about what happened between 1922, when Mussolini marched on Rome, and 1945, when sanity returned to the Eternal City.

Bill

A poster from the late 1930s, now in the Historical Museum of the Liberation, announcing the expulsion of foreign-born Jews from Italy and the exclusion of native-born Jews from banks, insurance companies and other occupations, as well as from the public schools.