Caprara

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Involved Unit

3rd Company SS Panzer Reconnaissance battalion 16 ‘Reichsführer-SS’

Commander

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

Culprits

Friedrich Schmidkonz

Victims

63

Armed forces

Waffen-SS

• An old administrative centre

  The village of Caprara was located near the identically named mountain. It was divided into two groups of houses: Caprara di Sopra and Caprara di Sotto. For centuries, this medieval fortress-village was the most important administrative centre in the region—the communal seat was moved to Marzabotto in the first half of the nineteenth century. At the time of the massacre, Caprara still had some importance as a regional centre. Thirteen families lived in the village, which had a chemist’s and a tavern. Most of the residents farmed the land of the Marquis Beccadelli as tenants.

  In September 1944 people driven out of Villa d’Ignano, including the Astrali and Lubini families, also lived there. A detachment of the ‘Stella Rossa’ brigade led by a Russian officer named ‘Karaton’ was hiding out in the area. The detachment was mainly composed of German deserters who originally hailed from the Soviet Union. 

• Uncertainty about the 29 Sept. events

  The precise course of the events in Caprara on 29 Sept. is unclear. Possibly a flak unit reached the location in the early morning and encountered partisans. Losses incurred by a flak unit while fighting partisans are documented for that day. At the trial of Walter Reder, German witnesses spoke of discovering the corpse of a Luftwaffe officer in the vicinity. In the morning, eight members of the Tondi family were murdered in the woods near Caprara, presumably by a flak unit. 

  The massacre in the village took place later on, around noon, when an SS squad coming from the direction of Casaglia arrived in Caprara and drove the local residents into the kitchen of one of the buildings.

• A massacre of women and children

  After the first encounter in the morning, most of the village’s men had hidden in the nearby woods or joined the partisans at the top of Monte Caprara. When the soldiers arrived around noon, nearly all the remaining villagers were women and children. The soldiers began to throw hand grenades through the tavern’s window and to shoot at close range at those locked up inside. Finally, the building was set on fire. 

  The 35 victims included three people belonging to the partisans – two young men and a woman named Cleonice Rosa; there was also one adult man who was not a partisan.  All the other victims were women, young people, children, even infants. The entire family of Primo Lubini from Villa d'Ignano was murdered, including seven children under 14. As so often in massacres of this sort, not all these civilians were killed immediately; some of those who were merely wounded could save themselves. In total, eight people seem to have survived the carnage. 

  The victims’ corpses, together with the eight members of the Tondi family killed in the woods in the morning, were buried in a mass grave outside the village of Caprara di Sopra.