Civitella in Val di Chiana

Back to main massacre

Involved Unit

Military Police Detachment b 1000; Alarm Company “Vesuv”; Alarm Company “Pauke”; “Hermann Göring” military band

Commander

Parachute Panzer Division “Hermann Göring”

Culprits

Captain Heinz Barz; Leutnant Siegfried Böttcher

Victims

98 

Armed forces

Wehrmacht

• Attack at dawn

  Civitella is a town with a medieval layout, situated on a hill and surrounded by walls. The main entrances and therefore the only escape routes were Porta Senese in the south and Porta Aretina in the north. Before the war, 284 people lived there: 98 were victims of the massacre, most of them inside the walls, about 30 outside the walls. 

  The operation began at dawn: By a bridge below Civitella, eyewitnesses spotted parked military vehicles camouflaged against detection from the air and a large number of soldiers setting off at around six in the morning.

  The soldiers belonged to the "Vesuv" Alarm Company, which consisted of around 100 men from the division's supply troops. They first surrounded the farmhouses below Civitella and then began their ascent towards the village.

  In Casa Bozzi, a cluster of houses at the foot of Civitella, a father and three of his sons were killed. Just outside the entrance to the village, a woman and two men were shot dead, who were on their way to Civitella for morning mass with other residents of the neighbouring farmsteads. Six men were killed in front of Porta Senese and a seventh, the butcher, was shot on the doorstep of his shop.

• Combing the village and shooting the men

  When they arrived in the village, the soldiers split up into small groups. They forced their way into the houses and dragged the men out. They gave the women and children no time to get dressed or take their personal belongings with them. The houses were first looted and then set on fire. In one of the first houses near Porta Senese, two men were shot dead in front of their families. The bodies of some of the victims shot in the street were then thrown into the cellar of a burning building. Four men were lined up in front of the wall a few steps from the gate and shot. In Via di Mezzo, one man was shot in front of his family and another on the stairs of the house.

  In the meantime, some of the soldiers had reached the upper part of the village. The hospice and a small hospital were located in a house in Piazza Becattini: six men and two women aged between 70 and 82 were killed at the entrance with gunshots and hand grenades. In the Tiezzi family home, opposite the hospice, a father and son were found in their bedroom and shot dead. Two other people were killed while trying to escape in Piazza Becattini. From here, the soldiers reached Piazza Vittorio Emanuele. Here stood some of the most important buildings in Civitella: the school, the old town hall and the headquarters of the Dopolavoro organisation, where the partisan attack of 18 June had taken place. When the soldiers arrived in the square, most of the inhabitants were in the church. From here they heard numerous shots and the explosion of a hand grenade against the door.

  Some then tried to escape through the side exits. Within a few minutes, however, three or four soldiers stormed in, interrupted the mass and ordered those present to leave. The 20 or so soldiers in the square greeted the new arrivals with shouts and jeers. According to witnesses, the actions were coordinated by a sergeant on site. Outside the church, the men were separated from the women and children and held at gunpoint in the square. The women and children were forcibly driven out of the village.

  All of the detained men were targeted in the massacre, with only a few being able to escape. They were led in groups of five to a spot behind the square and killed there by shots to the back of the head. One of them survived gravely wounded, others tried to escape, but only one managed to save himself. There were 25 victims in total. In the settlement known as "La Palazzina" at the foot of the hill, the soldiers initially confined themselves to arresting 70-75 people while the houses in Civitella burned. Only after a document was handed over to the unit's commander were the women and children released and driven away. The remaining 20 men were killed at a spot behind the bridge by machine-gun fire.