Creda

Back to main massacre

Involved Unit

A detachment that consisted of members of the Ic-battalion, supply troops, and Divisions-Begleit-Kompanie 16 led by SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Schmidt.

Commander

16th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Reichsführer-SS’

Culprits

Helmut Looß, Franz Schmidt

Victims

69

Armed forces

Waffen-SS

• The attack on Case Creda

  Case Creda is a village in the Reno Valley on the slopes of Monte Sterlese, not far from Pioppe di Salvaro. Alongside the Cardi and Righi farming families, who had lived there for many years, in the summer of 1944 some families sought shelter there after fleeing from heavily bombed areas; these included the Gandolfi, Lolli, Macchelli, and Marchi families.

  On 26 Sept. 1944, during an encounter between partisans and German soldiers in the Pioppe vicinity, two young SS-men from Divisions-Begleit-Kompanie 16 were wounded. On 29 Sept., a large column of soldiers arrived at the Creda farm before daybreak. The Germans rounded up all the people found there. The appr. ninety civilians, including twenty to thirty men, were locked in a barn. While the column moved on, a group armed with a machine gun remained there on guard duty. Eye witnesses report that the soldiers waited for a light-signal. When it came, they opened fire on the civilians and threw hand grenades at them. Sixty-nine people died. Meanwhile the column continued marching, presumably toward San Martino, perpetrating additional massacres in the farmhouses along the road. In Vallego, eight children, two women, and a 72-year-old man were murdered.

• The perpetrators

  For a long time, the composition of the column responsible for the massacre was unclear.  Older reconstructions assumed that the massacre had been carried out by Russian soldiers from an eastern battalion. That thesis has been refuted. The perpetrators belonged to an SS unit. According to the statements of Max Simon and Walter Reder at their trials, the troops deployed in the Creda area stood under the leadership of SS Hauptsturmführer Franz Schmidt, then an orderly officer in battalion Ic of division headquarters. Most of the soldiers under Schmidt’s command belonged to Divisions-Begleit-Kompanie 16, a special motorcycle-mounted ‘escort’ unit in half-battalion strength armed with heavy weapons and reserved for deployment by the division commander as needed. Survivors report that the soldiers were accompanied by a former partisan named ‘Cacao’; he is said to have guided the SS-men and betrayed the partisans and their helpers.