Cornia
29 June 1944 , Cornia, district of Civitella in Val di Chiana (Arezzo, Toscana)
Men from the Feldgendarmerie and the ‘Hermann Göring’ Division’s military band rounded up everyone they came across on the road to Cornia, a district of Civitella. Unlike the action in the main town and San Pancrazio, women and children were also murdered here.
- Involved Unit
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Military Police Detachment b 1000; “Hermann Göring” military band
- Culprits
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Captain Heinz Barz
- Victims
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32 in Cornia, 16 in Gebbia
- Armed forces
-
Wehrmacht
-
Women and children shot as well
The motives for the violent actions of the German troops were probably revenge and retaliation. The parish of Cornia and its priest in particular were seen as supporters of the partisans and were therefore frequently threatened by local fascists.
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Revenge against partisans
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Violence in the streets and on the farmsteads
-
In Solaia and Gebbia
The Swedish artist Helga Elmqvist and her husband Giovanni Cau, a writer, were arrested by the Feldgendarmerie on charges of supporting partisans and subsequently disappeared.
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Helga Elmqvist and Giovanni Cau
Sources
The Civitella massacre is barely mentioned in the German military records. The only document in the military records that can be clearly traced back to this event is a map of the Ic detachment of the LXXVI Panzer Corps dated 30 June 1944 with information on the location of partisan groups. A large circle was drawn around the area of Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio, the label "Bandengebiet" (‘gang area’) and the reference to a "G[egen]M[aßnahme]" (counter measure) on 29 June 1944 were inserted: BArch, RH 24-76/13, Gen.Kdo. LXXVI. Pz.K., Ic-Bandenlagekarte vom 30. Juni 1944. The data on the losses suffered by the German troops in Civitella and the surrounding area before the massacre are kept in the PA-Department of the Federal Archives in Berlin.
The documents of the Allied investigation are kept at the National Archives in London: WO 204/11479, Atrocities committed by German Troops at Civitella, Cornia and San Pancrazio and WO 310/220. The materials of the trial of General Wilhelm Schmalz from 1948-1950 are partly kept in the archives of the Military Prosecutor's Office in Rome, as are the materials of the most recent investigations and proceedings. The investigations conducted by the Düsseldorf Public Prosecutor's Office between 1956 and 1958 are kept in the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) State Archives: NW 377, No. 3786. The files of the investigation proceedings of the Dortmund Public Prosecutor's Office (45 Js 1/04) are kept in its archives.
Literature
Ida Balò-Valli, Giugno 1944. Civitella racconta, Cortona, L'Etruria, 1994.
Giovanni Contini, La memoria divisa, Milano, Rizzoli, 1997.
Carlo Gentile,
Carlo Gentile, Le stragi del 1944 in provincia di Arezzo ed i loro perpetratori (Relazione presentata in preparazione della richiesta di apertura di indagini da parte dei comuni di Bucine, Cavriglia, Civitella in Val di Chiana e Stia), Colonia, 1998, online: https://uni-koeln.academia.edu/CarloGentile
Michael Geyer, „Es muß daher mit schnellen und drakonischen Maßnahmen durchgegriffen werden“. Civitella Val di Chiana am 29. Juni 1944, in: Hannes
Christiane Kohl, Villa Paradiso. Als der Krieg in die Toskana kam, München, Goldmann, 2002.
Authorship and translation
Author: Carlo Gentile
Translated from German by: Antonia Frinken
© Project ‘The Massacres in Occupied Italy (1943-1945): Integrating the Perpetrators’ Memories’
2023