Corrado Capecchi, military internee

• … and they used to rinse clothes in the Ombrone
• After September 8th 1943
• Between the twenties and thirties
• Corrado Capecchi, military internee
  • A medal (at last) for Corrado
  • The joke of the military internees
• Five places of Romanesque Carmignano
• Friar Bocci, at the beginning of the twentieth century
• From archaeologists to farmers
• Gino Balena
• Gino di Fico
• Historical shops in Carmignano
• In the name of Jesus and Saint Peter, may the sty go away
• Liberation day
• Matteucci, the ‘forgotten’ bishop
• Soldier in Greece
• Stories from a school notebook
• Stories of donkeys and jockeys
• Stories of mayors and town councils in Carmignano
• Stories of our home
• Stories of war and displaced persons
• The Battistina and other scary stories
• The colours of the rioni
• The Golden Roster
• The last sharecropper in Carmignano
• The siege in memory of the Princess
• The tree of liberty in Carmignano
• Ugo Contini Bonacossi
• Vittorio’s bicycles
• When the river Arno was fordable ..
• When they were digging pietra serena between Arno and Ombrone
• The colours of Carmignano, a small guide for tourists
  • Ancient churches and abbeys. Montalbano, a crossroads for pilgrims.
    • San Giusto al Pinone
    • San Jacopo in Capezzana
    • San Leonardo in Artimino
    • San Lorenzo in Montalbiolo
    • San Martino in Campo
    • San Michele amarcord
      • San Michele, the theater takes to the streets
• Itineraries for just a few days or more
  • Walking through history and nature
  • A Sunday devoted to the discovery of Artimino
  • A few words about the hamlets of Carmignano
  • The Fontina and Castagnati Lake
• Guides to download

CORRADO Capecchi, a more that eighty year old grandfather who lives in the central square of Carmignano, was captured after the armistice of 8th September. His story is the same of many other Italian soldiers: the ones who did not return, and the few survivors still alive today due to the consequences of imprisonment or old age.
In 1943, Corrado was 22 years old and was in Albania conscripted to the “Firenze” military division, one of the many among the 35 which at that time were stationed outside the national territory and directly dependent on the German High Command.   At first Bersagliere, a veteran of the Yugoslav campaign, and then auxiliary Carabiniere, he was deported to the north-west of Germany between Hanover and Braunschweig. In the K.d.F. labour camp in Fallersleben, which was once the  holiday village of German workers who were members of the association of the same name, he remained for nearly two years. He was liberated by the Americans in April 45 and then repatriated in July of the same year. “Was It Sant’Anna’s day?” he recounts “I remember because my mother told me she had long prayed to the Saint and on that day I got back.” However, it was a quiet return, “almost as it happens with the ones infected with the plague.” he recalls. On the refusal to collaborate with the Nazis of 600,000 captured Italian soldiers was in fact already dropped the silence that obfuscated their memory for so many years.

Many anecdotes are still vivid and clear in Corrado’s mind though, as well the vexation he suffered from. He talks about the repeated attempts of the German soldiers to induce them to cooperate. He pauses and his eyes wander in the void, he explains how nearby, inside the factory of “Stadt des Kadief Wagen” unlikely amtraks for the landing in England, cars, aircrafts and the notorious V1 and V2 flying bombs were being produced. He also remembers how at dawn they had to follow a bumpy and muddy path at least five kilometres long. On either side plantations of beets, potatoes and carrots stretched. But woe is the one who picked even a single fruit. The guards were watching carefully and the punishments could be really exemplary. The voice pauses again. “We ate once a day, you know, if we were lucky”. Corrado goes on explaining “and we were assigned to the excavation for building barracks of every type. “Many died of hunger and disease. Often, In the morning, someone was absent at the roll-call. We used to go to look for them in the barracks and they were there, dead, extinguished like a candle.”(wf)