Pioppe di Salvaro

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Involved Unit

Ic-battalion of division headquarters

SS Feldgendarmerie-Kompanie 16

Commander

16. SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Division "Reichsführer-SS"

Culprits

Helmut Looß

Victims

45

Armed forces

Waffen-SS

• The ‘Canapiera’ hemp factory

  An industrial plant for hemp-processing was located at Pioppe di Salvaro on the Reno River. It had been founded by the Turri family and sold to the Industrie Canapiere Italiane company in 1929. The plant employed circa 400 workers; in 1944 it was one of the targets of Allied air raids.

• A collecting point for forced labourers

  In late September 1944, the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Reichsführer-SS’ began to use the destroyed factory grounds as a collecting point for persons who had been taken prisoner in actions against the ‘Stella Rossa’ partisan brigade. While the massacres in the mountain villages had involved the murder of almost everyone, in the valleys the SS initially limited itself to a round-up on the factory grounds of all men fit for work. In total, appr.  500 men were kept there for around three days; the group included some priests and monks.

• Interrogations

  Aimed at determining if the arrested men included partisan-helpers, the interrogations began on 30 Sept. This sort of investigation was the remit of division headquarters' Ic-department. It was carried out by an RSI officer, possibly in the presence of a young man named ‘Cacao’, formerly a partisan and meanwhile an SS collaborator and informer. 

  The men who were unable to work were separated from those fit enough;  there are indications that medical personnel from the SS took part in the selection and that the field gendarmery of the SS division was responsible for guarding the prisoners.

• The massacre of men not fit for work

  On the evening of 1 Oct. 1944, appr. 50 men found unfit for work were first robbed of their personal belongings and valuables, then murdered, their corpses tossed into the factory’s cistern. There were a few survivors. 

  Additional men classified as unfit for work were gunned down that same day in the vicinity of Canovetta, in the Setta Valley. There were appr. 25 victims, with four men surviving the massacre.

• The forced-labour camp at the Caserme Rosse

  The men selected as fit for work were brought at night to the Pioppe train station and transported by train to the forced-labour camp at the Caserme Rosse, located in Corticella, on Bologna’s northern border. Here they were again subjected to medical examination, some then being deported to Germany for labour, others consigned to forced labour for the Wehrmacht in Italy. 

  On 2 Oct., the division’s Ic-battalion reported that in the course of the operations against the ‘Stella Rossa’, 456 persons had been sent into forced labour. This corresponds to survivors’ statements that appr. 500 men were held at the Pioppe hemp factory.