Eyewitness Testimony Ugo Eleonori

1 Eleonori Ugo born in Tolentino in 1927, rounded up in Tolentino on May 5, 1944, interviewed by the student Paparoni Laura and the two teachers Adriana Pallotto and Daniela Tasso. Teacher: How did you end up in Germany? Ugo: It's not easy, at 16 years old... Here in Tolentino there was a roundup in the area behind me because a fascist had been killed by a partisan. In conclusion, they were informed that this partisan had crossed the river and had come towards the hill. Mussolini had already fallen... Teacher: So after July 25. Ugo: Unfortunately, I don't remember the dates... I didn't even remember where Tolentino was! I was a kid... I wasn't even 17 yet! They took me in the roundup on May 5... I was hiding my older brother, who was born in '24, who had escaped from Braccano and had come here to Tolentino... he had hidden inside a house and no one had seen him. But they couldn't do anything else, these famous fascists, because it's not true that only the Germans took us away! In short, we ended up in the hands of the Germans because it was convenient for them, but it was the fascists who caught us. On May 5 they took us to Sforzacosta, but down there they still defended us! In short, the fascists and the Germans kept us under pressure... Teacher: Where in Sforzacosta? Ugo: In Sforzacosta there was a concentration camp... then they took us directly to Florence, and from Florence, as far as I remember, we went to Suzzara... from there, always treated like animals, they took us to Germany, to (Niedecross), where there was a sorting and they gave us the first meals. For 2-3 days we never ate, then a German told us that if we didn't eat that stuff they would give it to us again until we ate it! In fact, on the third day the soup was more sour than it was on the first... They kept us in a shed to sleep because the barracks were not ready yet. In the soup they gave us to eat there were only some pieces of green cabbage and no potatoes at all... we had a hard time, so much so that the German who was watching us told us to throw it away, maybe because he was a father... then they took us to the barracks, where there was a division into teams. From there forced labor began...[....] The interviewee dwells on the difficulty of telling the experienced story. He finds it very difficult today to make oneself understood, to make people understand what the deportees lived through. "It's not easy to tell things that one has not suffered." He talks about the trip recently made to Kahla to which he was invited; about the meetings held in Tolentino, with students and journalists, together with Balilla Bolognesi "But what are you going to tell these people? I told them I suffered from hunger, but we, if we didn't have bread, we ate the brioches! (he says resentfully) He has moments of emotion! We were a very poor family and we didn't even have shoes, and now, even though I am 79 years old, I have the courage to face things... There, to go steal potato peels, I don't know how many beatings I took...! Fortunately, some Germans gave us some information... when there was hunger we really did everything... at first they gave us 200 grams of bread where instead of flour there was sawdust, and instead of wheat flour there was oats, which today is not even given to horses... I suffered a lot because I was small, but in the end I got along well because, being born in a poor family, my father took me to work from a young age,... I remember that the first day they took us to work they made us dig 2 meters deep and I would have liked to know what it was for, if to throw ourselves in or something else... they told us it was to put water in, but it doesn't seem to me that they could make a hole two meters deep and about sixty wide... in fact later we discovered that when someone died they were thrown in there and no one talked about it anymore... A pit to put these prisoners, because many, many, many, like that poor Calvigioni.....  2 I have to be honest, I wasn’t a bandit at home, but I was a guy who couldn’t stand hunger... I even went to ask for food from families and I even found a kind lady who accepted me, but then there were some elders, those Germans who ruined my life! They were watching and they saw me... It wasn’t easy to go to work at that age, at 17 with older guys, but I had no choice because if you didn’t work they either shot you or beat you up... they were bullies and were commanded by the Discipline Column, those with the swastika on their arm, the SS, and everyone trembled before them! But now if a party like the SS came, everyone would still tremble. When they came to my house, they didn’t say “give me a glass of water,” but came with a revolver and said: “tell me where he is or I’ll kill you!” I don’t know how we survived... Prof: Who was this lady who accepted you, in Germany? Ugo: Yes, I went there once a week, I chopped some wood for her and in exchange she gave me a couple of potatoes, because the ration wasn’t enough, if you had breakfast you didn’t have dinner... Prof: But were you free to go out? Ugo: No no... if they caught you you were taken to the Discipline Column. It was risky, you had to take risks to save yourself... I remember Calvigioni, Farroni, from this area... Calvigioni (his mother and my mother were cousin sisters) I saw him die in my arms! Then to revive the story it was Calvigioni Benito who wanted to take me to Germany to put up a plaque. But I didn’t have the courage, because it’s very hard for me even to tell it! There we started working in the morning: a guard woke us very early and then with the column we left to go to work... at the workplace there was an old man who watched us to make sure we all worked hard, and if someone didn’t, he was beaten. I took many beatings because I tried to trick him, but it wasn’t easy!... This old man watched about 25 people and no one could be absent... To avoid work you had to have at least 38 degrees fever otherwise there was no rest. I never had days off, only the time I went to assist this Calvigioni, I had some days off, because a piece of iron fell on me and crushed a finger and when he took off the nail, with a small knife he pulled it off and that was it, without any concern and he gave me a slap because he wanted me not to turn around. The Germans were happier if we were dead because for them we were a nuisance... If they want to make history with us, they are already doing it (he points to the book they gave him at the Piacenza conference). He says he met at the recent Piacenza conference someone who had been with him at Kahla, in the same camp. Prof: Let’s go back to Niedercross. Ugo: Niedercross was the district of Kahla where the station was located where the “slaves” got off. We worked in a tunnel, but fortunately I almost always worked outside, and the earth they threw out of the tunnel down the ravine, we loaded it below with another cart... Prof: Specifically, what kind of work did you do? Ugo: “We did manual labor, always with shovel and pickaxe, and with these teams we built roads, went into tunnels, went to clear forests, but their main interest was to complete an airport. We prisoners continued the excavation inside, and the yard outside for unloading. From there radio-controlled jet missiles would be launched. They said that even those from the 1915-18 war had worked there, because the Germans liked to bring Italians to Germany as long as they worked, but when they could no longer feed them they were happier if they died, because they had no yield... With me, for example, they had little yield, because I was small, but I had to prove myself because they beat you, they didn’t joke there. I took so many beatings, I lost a couple of teeth, I think from the nerves, because otherwise I would have lost them all. The Germans still didn’t believe they would lose... many died in the tunnel because of forced labor... One night I really went into the tunnel without saying anything, but the tunnels were many,and I went to steal something to eat. There was someone in the gallery but I couldn't understand where the voices were coming from. I wanted to take some leftovers from these Germans, some pieces of bread or some potato peelings or some cooked potatoes that they threw away, and I managed to, but I couldn't get out and it was a close call because if I hadn't returned to work there would have been trouble. In the end, I got out and when I came back I said I had been to the toilet, but the old man didn't believe it because I had been absent for a long time... The work was always forced because they wanted to get the most out of the labor and made us do different jobs depending on the need... once, for example, we had to unload a truck of beets... but if there was no staff, they would take two or three workers or even the whole team and send them where needed, but it was always forced labor. Whether it rained or not, I returned with the same clothes I left with, at Christmas of '44 we worked outside and, if by chance you felt like peeing, I don't know if it reached the ground: it froze in the air! But there you had to work... The Germans had leather jackets, if they did a job where they had to stand still they had a little hut... instead there we always worked, the Italian had to always be at work and if you didn't go to work you didn't even get the card to eat... to go to the roll call you had to pass in front of a hut because it gave you the ausweis, the document you had to carry for sure to pass... Prof: So since they took you away you have always stayed in the same clothes Ugo: When we left in May, we had light clothes, they didn't give us anything else. When you went to sleep, you had to put them back on because there was nothing else. When they took me away, they took me for a Badoglio supporter, a traitor... My brother, who was born in '24, was even shorter than me, they took me for my physique, they didn't care about age... I was taken during the reprisal for the killing of that fascist by a partisan. We were not killed, but we were taken away, because they were interested in labor... They didn't even ask me how old I was, they took me because I had a certain spirit! I started working with my father at the age of 8, with the bricklayers, I was in the third grade, and I even earned 3 lire. Prof: Do you remember, when they took you away, the calls to enlist in the Republic of Salò? Ugo: "They asked that there too... whoever wanted to enlist to go dig the pits or to provide other labor got double rations, but it was very convenient for the fascists... but I didn't go because I couldn't betray a brother or an Italian or an American who came to liberate us! Prof. Your family and others, how did you manage to be anti-fascists before the war, when it is generally thought that only with the war did people understand what fascism was? Ugo. I was an anti-fascist, certainly influenced by the family, because I saw that these were traitors and were always bullies [...]. Even before the war, in the countryside, people began to understand that the fascist government was not good because, for example, the boss was still commanded by Mussolini and the peasants had to bring him a gift once a month, vegetables, in short there was a certain discipline... at some point they took all the gold they found in the houses... we were too enslaved... even our bosses were slaves... Prof. So you in the countryside realized that this policy was not right because it forced you to be too subjected to the bosses Ugo: Too enslaved. They were like the Germans. They told you you had to do this and you had to do it. Too harsh. Especially the tenant farmer who depended on the boss was a slave. When we were in Germany, we didn't really understand what was happening, but every now and then we heard the Germans say that the war was about to end... later, because of this we became more enslaved, they became harsher since they realized they could no longer achieve the victory they wanted... we didn't have much information: when we finished work we were lined up two by two and sent to the huts [...] but when I went begging, a lady took me in and I went to her twice a week to do some  4 matters, in the moments when I was not on duty at work. To do this, I had to escape, and if the police saw you, they would shoot you, but I managed to do it, thank God... Sometimes the Germans gave us cigarettes, and I resold them to this lady to get the food card... but I couldn't go to get the food, yet I risked it and went anyway... A squad of carabinieri saw me with two loaves of bread in my hands and asked me what I was carrying... I said I had the card and showed it to them, but they didn't believe me and beat me, but I managed to escape... then I told them I would take the bread to the shop, so they followed me, but in the end, the lady confirmed what I had said and they let me keep the bread... although they still gave me a beating. Prof: And the story about the lady? Ugo: Basically, one day she asked me if I had a girlfriend. I told her no because I was still young, and she replied that it was the same, but I didn't understand immediately because I had never left the house! One evening she invited me to stay for dinner, but I said no and left. When I came out, at the entrance there were three old Germans with their hands out of their pockets and turned towards the boot... in the boot was a club! When they called me, I understood they wanted to beat me, so before they realized it, I had already escaped! But I could never go back to that house. Prof: When the Germans became increasingly cruel because they realized they were losing, the moment of surrender was approaching... What happened? Ugo: It was tough there. At first, it was very tough because we slept on wooden bunks, there was nothing, just the boards and nothing else; wet clothes... if they dripped... whoever lives, lives, whoever dies, dies, they didn't care... we had no more food, not even water... because they said they would bring it, but either the engine didn't work, or there was no more water, I don't know... to drink, we had to drink even the horse's urine, whatever was in front of you, because if you brought a bottle, they wouldn't allow it. In short, we suffered hunger and thirst. When they began to understand that the war was ending, or at least they were uncomfortable, and they had no more food to give us, in the end, they gave us 200 grams of bread with 20% rye. They didn't even give us potatoes; in the soup, they put two pieces of red cabbage. When they realized it was about to end... they opened the camps, even though we had almost devastated them because when we went to steal, I would loosen the fence around the barracks to pass through, because on the other side there was a guard... Either I jumped the fence, since I was young, or I took off a slat, then we put it back. When they saw things were bad, they lined us up, started lining up the different camps... from the first to the seventh, we were over 3,000 people! We went on for 5-6 days of walking, but eating was out of the question! Both at the front and at the end of the column, there was a German... we walked a lot, and the bombings began, and people started to decrease, and I was with Angioletti, I remember he stopped to go to the toilet. I told him we had to try to keep walking because whoever fell behind the group was shot... they didn't feed us. One day, I went to a family who gave me a piece of bread, but they immediately jumped on me and took it all except what remained in my hand. Prof: Why did they kill those who fell behind? Ugo: Because they were fugitives; they wanted to take them all to the extermination column. Prof. Pallotto confirms that these were the famous death marches. Ugo: Yes, they wanted to take everyone to extermination, but people started to scatter. In the end, we were no longer led by old men but by young boys with rifles who shot you if you fell behind. Finally, one evening, while we were walking, at a certain point, we saw a vast field of vegetables, all in bloom, full of roses: the Italians went there in droves; so we thought to go too to look for something to eat... Suddenly, just a little away from the column, after crossing the road, we heard gunshots and saw people rolling down the hill... They had been killed! So we didn't go there anymore... Night fell, we threw ourselves into a forest and came out in a hamlet of about twenty houses and went to sleep inside a hayloft, we heard other voices and, fearing we had been discovered, we hid among the hay. Instead, they were other Italians moving around there... When we woke up in the morning, we went to a nearby house and stole dog food... then we escaped through a forest, and it took a day and a night to get out. One evening, it was almost night, we heard talking... it was a squad of Germans carrying rifles. So, we had to head in another direction... arriving on the other side of the hill, we had to cross another forest... on the way, we found a small village and stopped... an old man hosted us and let us sleep in a little shack, but in the morning we had to leave because if we were discovered, they would have killed us all... he gave us 3 potatoes, and the next morning he directed us again towards the forest, and we walked for eight days... then we managed to find a family who hosted us, but it was the family of a policeman. In the end, we discovered that we helped him because he found us useful to save his life when the Americans arrived, but we stayed there until the end of the war. When the Americans arrived, first they saved us, then they abandoned us in the middle of the river, and we found ourselves eating potatoes again. We walked in all directions until a German directed us the right way, and with a freight train, we managed to get to Italy.