Harrowing memories: Sant'Anna di Stazzema - A massacre and its consequences

Harrowing memories: Sant'Anna di Stazzema - A massacre and its consequences

On August 12, 1944, Waffen-SS soldiers committed one of the most atrocious war crimes in Western Europe in the Italian mountain village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema. In this small village, which today only has around 20 inhabitants, up to 560 people were killed, including around 130 children. Many of the victims, such as the mother and two sisters of Adele Pardini, who is celebrating her 84th birthday today, were killed. This was the beginning of a long-lasting silence and forgetting about the terrible events, which was only broken through the commitment of survivors and their descendants.

The SS soldiers surrounded the village with the order to kill all civilians. Pardini can still vividly remember how the soldiers asked her and her family to put down their cup of milk and come with them. In the church of Sant'Anna, 120 people were shot and then burned. Pardini survived because her older sister pulled her into hiding when their mother was shot. For many decades, the brutality of the massacre received little public attention until survivors like Pardini called for the events to be dealt with.

The exhibition “Telling about living”

In the context of these memories, an important exhibition will take place in the coming weeks: “Telling about living,” which is dedicated to the survivors of the massacre and their experiences. It will be ceremoniously opened on May 14, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. in the Luther Church in Konstanz. Survivors of the massacre and their relatives will also be present. The exhibition, which was developed as an interdisciplinary project at the University of Konstanz, was initiated to give the victims and their stories a space and to shine a light on what has been forgotten. The exhibition shows how survivors and their descendants talk about life with and after the massacre, which often goes unnoticed by the public.

The idea behind the project was to capture the complex experiences of the surviving children of Sant’Anna di Stazzema from different perspectives. The lecturers Sarah Seidel and Maria Lidola documented contemporary witness accounts together with students. Seminars in Konstanz dealt with remembering, artistic processing and the social silence surrounding these events. The exhibition will be on view in the Bürgersaal of the city of Konstanz (Sankt-Stephans-Platz 17) until May 30, 2025 and offers daily access from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. with free admission. Interested school classes can also request guided tours.

An unfinished quest for justice

The trial, which opened after the massacre, began in April 2004, 60 years after the events, when the military court of La Spezia investigated several perpetrators who were still alive. In 2005, ten former SS members were sentenced to life imprisonment, but these convicts were never extradited to Germany, and in 2012 the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office closed its investigation. Michele Morabito, the director of the Resistance Museum, criticizes the German handling of the events and the inadequate processing of them.

Adele Pardini and many other affected families are demanding justice. They ask themselves what their crime was and fight to ensure that the massacre and its victims are not forgotten. Sant'Anna di Stazzema, now a memorial with a museum and monument, remains a symbolic place of remembrance of the atrocities of war and of the culture of remembrance that is still necessary.

The exhibition will not only keep memories alive, but also provide a space for dialogue and reflection that goes far beyond the atrocities of the last century. Further information is available on the website University of Konstanz available. The taz reports on the spreading memory and the voices of those who experienced the injustice.