My maternal grandparents are originally from Fornelli, a medieval village in the province of Isernia. It was one of the few towns in Molise to be awarded the Bronze Medal of Civil Valour. Fornelli was located along the Barbara Line. Starting in mid-September,1943, the Germans began confiscating food supplies, livestock, and vehicles, training men to use in setting up defensive lines. However, a few citizens, coordinated by mayor Giuseppe Laurelli and the parish priest, Don Antonio D’Ambrosi, organised sabotage.

On the morning of October 3, three German soldiers, while confiscating livestock in the Castello district, were hit by hand grenades thrown by a young man from Fornelli. One soldier died, two were injured and taken to the field hospital. Within hours, the Germans responded violently: ten Fornellesi were to have died, but the mayor sacrificed himself, saving four of them.

After a trial, the five men from the Castello district and the mayor were sentenced to death by hanging. Specifically, the former were accused of covering up for the perpetrator of the ambush; the mayor was accused of anti-fascism and of having sheltered prisoners who had escaped from the Sulmona camp and also a British family suspected of espionage.

The next day, October 4th, the death sentence was read publicly in the main square of Fornelli. Before the execution, the entire town was evacuated. The noble buildings and the entire Castello district were destroyed and burned. The condemned were killed. Their bodies remained on display for two weeks, as a warning to the population. On October 19th, the bodies, now decomposing and mauled by animals, were returned to their families for burial.

In 2020, almost 80 years later, Italy enforced a perhaps historic ruling against the Federal Republic of Germany for the massacre, awarding €12 million in compensation to the victims’ heirs and to the municipality, which invested the funds to honour the memory of the martyrs. My grandfather, a former municipal administrator, was one of the advocates for the war crime compensation claim and was also responsible for the creation of the Massacre Museum, inaugurated in 2021.

My grandfather used to tell this dramatic story of violence and of individual courage, but above all one of hope and human resilience, within the family. As a child, with my grandparents, I often visited the site of the execution where there is a small chapel. Every year it becomes a gathering place to commemorate the event with a torchlight procession and a religious ceremony.