Italians War Criminals of WW2

[Wernazuma III]

You mean punish Germany today?

[TCO]

Originally posted by Wernazuma III
You mean punish Germany today?

naah. More the people who led the Jew-burning.

Anyway, you're just pissed that we kicked your ass. Hard.

[Datajack Franit]

Hm did you take a decision about which university you're going to attend, Gio' wine?

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by GP

Anyway, you're just pissed that we kicked your ass. Hard.

Sure, I lament so much that we were freed from Nazis.

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
Hm did you take a decision about which university you're going to attend, Gio' wine?

I dismissed the US, too far away, and one friend of mine which went to Berkley (sp?) told me that he was really disappointed, as he is paying a lot of money for an education which is worse than the one I can get at a University here, or at the Politecnico.

Now I'm looking at the EU, maybe Cambridge, although I'm currently thinking a best solution would be to take the Computer Science at the Politecnico of Torino, and than get a master degree abroad.

Saluti

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Originally posted by Chris 62

Italy had an excellent reputation in Yugoslavia, I can't recall any excesses by Italian forces there, nor in Russia.

That might be so, but to tell you what "excellent" reputation was (or how horrible the others p[robably were)... my gradfather was taken prisoner by the Italians even though he was a civilian.

He was working in his (I don't know how it is called in English, a small factory for processing wood) factory to say (I mean 10 ppl or so), when the Italians came (that was 1942 over there) they rounded up all men in the village. Had them standing 6 hrs first telling them if someone sits that they will be shot. Than locked them up in a barn for three days with no food just water. They got a bit of food after those three days and they were transported onto a train and put in a cattle wagon, the whole wagon totally full of people (you know nowhere to urinate and such, or lay down) and transported them in a concentration camp in Italy, with no food or water in between and that train trip was 3 days.

Got in the concentration camp and was there until the allies came ) when the whole thing broke down. However those concentration camp were not totally horrible, they were not shooting people without reason, only if they tried to escape and such, plus it was possible to receive the packets with food and send letters to the familiy. My grandfather was kind of unlucky because they tranferred him a couple of times at the beginning so the packets did not get to him for the first two months, but later on he was pretty much all right (I mean he was not going to die of cold or hunger, as he could have at the beginning. So with the allied invasion (I think the camp where he escaped from was near Florence, ) the whose situation became unstable and there were some riots in the camps so that camp kind of broke down, (another good thing about the Italians - Germans would probably try to kill as many as possible, Italians just probably left, and the the people just run - OK there was some deal with this camp that the most people got together and tried to go away collectivley, so the Fascists rounded them up again. (I don't know what happened next, as my grandfather and three of his mates from the village escaped from the camp but decided not to join the crowd and walked all the way back home from there. Well that is kind of short version, but shows you what was the treatment in WWII that earns you good reputation.

With that treatment I wouldn't be suprised that there were villages where they shot the people down and similar, like one which was destroyed totally near the village of my grandfather, and now it is just a ruin in the woods. That was a part of the Italian side in WWII.

However on the part of actual Italian people when they were coming back home on foot. - what to say than amazing, Italians were helping them all along, telling them where not to go where they knew that the remnant fascist troops still were... giving them food helped them to cross river Po and such. One guy of them four escaped without the shoes, barefoot and the first people they stayed with overnight gave him their shoes (and in those days it was not that you had 10 pairs in your house).

Ah well war is crazy but anyway it shows that many people on the wrong side are still good. (and those get prosecuted by their own side when the governmnet finds out that they were "helping the enemy" ) Just a reminder why mass bombings of civilian areas are wrong too.

[Giovanni Wine]

"Nice" picture OFTIG

And do you know what happened to those Italian officers who rounded your grandfather up, and the ones who were in charge of the concentration camp whre your grandfather stayed?

Also, as you pointed out, many Italian civilians were actually very against the fascists, and that's why when the allied soldiers landed in Sicily, many many of those civilians took courage and became partisans.
And this is also one of the reason that very few Italian Jews were sent to concentration camps.

luckily the Italian way of thinking of "going against the law" this time was useful

Saluti

[C0ckney]

my view was always that the italians were too inept and incompetant to commit war crimes

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by C0ckney
my view was always that the italians were too inept and incompetant to commit war crimes

Yup.. but instead we are very good in making art and love

Saluti

[OneFootInTheGrave]

No idea about the officers or anything... obviously the people could not know that, It is probable that the ones who rounded them up in the village escorted them to the train a couple of days later and they never saw them again. As I sad by the time they got back home the Italian regime was gone and Germans + Croatian Fascists took charge, even though the area is fairly remote and I think it has been freed by the Partizans by the time they got back. I am not sure about that, but the area was surely freed much earlier than the end of war. 1944 surely perhaps straight after the collapse of Italy or thereabouts.