It is inevitable that guesswork surrounds the exact fate of each of the 50,000 Allied prisoners of war who made a dash for freedom from their camps after the Armistice in September 1943. Italy was in chaos, the escapers themselves and the brave Italian families who sheltered them from the Germans and the Fascists were keeping a low profile.
The majority of the 50,000 were recaptured or killed, but it is estimated that 11,000 made it to safety, by reaching neutral Switzerland or by rejoining the Allied army. But how did they do it? What sanctuary did they find and, most importantly for understanding how former enemies could manage to co-exist, what was the interplay with their hosts?
The best way to answer these questions and build a picture of the PoWs’ life on the run is to drill down into a specific location. And this is what historian Pierluigi Felli has done in a meticulously researched study of a municipality in the province of Rieti, in the region of Lazio.
Borgorose, which was then known as Borgocollefegato, was slap on the north-south route that escapers took as they sought to cross over the Abruzzo mountains and reach the Allies in the south. There were also partisans active in the area and, in addition to the former PoWs, many Jews sought refuge there from their homes in Rome, which is just 70km away. It is not surprising that the Germans swiftly established themselves in the municipality, which comprised the five villages of Corvaro, Santo Stefano, Sant’Anatolia, Cartore and Spedino.
By exploring national and local archives in Italy, Italian army records, archives in Britain and the USA, and written and oral testimonies, Felli sets out to describe as closely as possible what was happening in Borgocollefegato between September 1943 and June 1944. Neither does he lose sight of the bigger picture: events in Corvaro and the other villages can only be understood in the context of the German occupation.
Felli writes: “The German presence in Borgocollefegato was characterised by the killing of helpless civilians, raids and round-ups aimed at hunting prisoners of war who had escaped from the camps and Jewish citizens who had found refuge in the area.” At one of those camps, Avezzano, which is near Corvaro, there had been 4,000 prisoners in the second half of 1943. They were of various nationalities, but the greater number were Indian.
The sparsely-populated hills and woods around Corvaro, with scattered farmhouses and huts, made the area an ideal place to hide. Felli estimates that there were certainly a hundred escapers hiding at Corvaro and the other villages. Don Filippo Ortenzi, the Corvaro priest, tried to get every house in Corvaro to take an escaper, and was himself under arrest for a time. There would also have been a considerable number who were just passing through.
Valuable information, however, is gleaned from a handful of accounts left by escapers who stayed in Corvaro for some months, among them Major Leslie Young, the father of Nick Young, chairman of the Monte San Martino Trust. Felli highlights Nick Young’s book, Escaping With His Life, which draws on his father’s diary to tell a riveting story. Young, who was in poor health, and a New Zealander, Charles Gatenby, were hidden by the De Michelis family at Corvaro until after the Allied landings at Anzio in January 1944, when they decided to attempt to reach Allied lines.
Leslie got through but, tragically his guides Eugenio (Nino) and Silvia Elfer, brother and sister, were both killed. A fact that takes us full-circle back to Corvaro, which is where Eugenio, a Jewish citizen from Rome, had been operating as a courier between the partisans and the Allies. At a ceremony in Rome in 1996, at which the Jewish community thanked its helpers, it was claimed that Nino had conducted 200 Allied servicemen to safety.
Nick Young’s research, and his friendship with Felli, sparked the latter’s interest in the student bursaries offered by the Monte San Martino Trust. Felli points out that since the bursaries were first awarded in 1989 only a small percentage have gone to candidates from Lazio and Umbria, disproportionately so considering the regions’ many claims to the post-war Allied Screening Commission (ASC) for compensation for help given to escapers. (Pleasingly, descendants of De Michelis have benefited.)
Felli suggests that one reason for the lower demand than in Le Marche, for example, is that stories of assistance to escapers in the area have stayed within families and have not created a “public memory”.
Thanks to the ongoing work to digitise the ASC records held by the National Archives and Records Administration at Washington DC, it is becoming easier to trace Italians who assisted escapers. More than 300 claims by citizens of Borgocollefegato have been identified.
“The work done so far represents a base for further research that could concern other parts of Rieti province,” concludes Felli.
Non Chiusero Le Porte, available only in Italian, was published by Radici Edizioni Collana Microcosmi in 2023
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