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- Herausgeber: Jonathan Ball
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Equally skilled in a variety of trades other than in the art of love, the Italian prisoners of war (POWs) who were incarcerated in South Africa during the Second World War are a source of great fascination to this day. Who were these men? And what made some of them attempt dramatic escapes, while others wanted to stay behind after the war? The first Italian POWs arrived in the Union of South Africa in early 1941, most of them being held in Zonderwater Camp outside Cullinan or in work camps across the country. The government of Jan Smuts saw them as a source of cheap labour that would contribute to harvesting schemes, road-building projects such as the old Du Toit's Kloof Pass between Paarl and Worcester and even to prickly-pear eradication schemes. Prisoners of Jan Smuts recounts the stories of survival and shenanigans of the Italian POWs in the Union through the eyes of five prisoners who had documented their experiences in memoirs and letters. While many POWs seemed to appreciate the opportunities to gain new skills, others clung to the Fascist ideas they had grown up with and refused to work . Many opted to remain in South Africa once the war had ended, forging quite a legacy. These included sculptor Edoardo Villa, who left an important mark in the local and international art world, and businessman Aurelio Gatti, who built an ice-cream empire whose gelato was to delight generations of South Africans.
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Italian Prisoners of War in South Africa in WWII
KAREN HORN
Jonathan Ball Publishers
johannesburg & cape town
For Nicky, my brave sister.
CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I care not where my body may take me as long as my soul is embarked on a meaningful journey. – Dante Alighieri
MY FIRST BOOK, In Enemy Hands: South African POWs in WWII (2015), was based on research about South African soldiers who were captured in North Africa during the war and their experiences as prisoners of war (POWs). These men were held captive in Italy, and later in German-occupied territories, and they returned home in 1945 only after the Allies defeated the German forces in April of that year.
Decades after the war, these veterans welcomed me into their homes and shared their stories. As captives, they sat on the sidelines as their friends fought on in the war, yet their isolation from the battlefront did not diminish their suffering. Upon reflection, I realised that it is not the hardship these men endured that fascinated me but their ability to live, hope, love and laugh during times of suffering – and even to turn out better men at the end of it.
As the Second World War spread across the globe between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of Italian conscripts were captured in East and North Africa. The Allies, especially Britain, decided that many of them should spend the war in POW camps in British Dominions, including South Africa. Prime Minister Jan Smuts agreed, and as a consequence between 60 000 and 100 000 Italian POWs were sent to the Union of South Africa.1
So, while homesick South African POWs whiled away their time in camps across Europe, Italian POWs did the same in the Zonderwater Prisoner-of-War Camp near Pretoria. It was, therefore, to Zonderwater that my focus then shifted.
A POW is someone who is captured and incarcerated by enemy forces during battle. Once a soldier raises a white flag to surrender, the rules of battle no longer apply. The Geneva Convention regulated the treatment of war prisoners to some extent, yet POWs remained largely at the mercy of their captors. Mental and physical survival depended on each man’s ability to develop new skills and to adapt to life in a POW camp. Their responses were diverse: many of them struggled with this process, but others thrived. Camp commanders and guards responded with a range of emotions, ranging from mild irritation to intense exasperation, depending on the POWs’ level of ingenuity in making their experience more bearable.
Colourful anecdotes about the Italian POWs persisted during the decades that followed the war and stories abound of their creativity, their technical skills – especially in construction projects – and also their convivial and romantic outlook on life. While there is truth to many of these stories, others are marked by exaggeration. The POWs’ presence also left tangible marks, such as the roads, mountain passes and churches they built, the crops they helped to harvest, the forests they helped to maintain and the enterprises they later embarked upon. Many South Africans remain fascinated by these foreign visitors and hold them in high regard. There is no doubt that they made a valuable contribution to South Africa during the war, but at what cost to themselves both emotionally and socially? Some even stayed in South Africa to forge careers and left indelible imprints here: if you have ever wondered where the Italian-styled Gatti’s ice cream derived its name, or attended any of the erstwhile Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB) operas in Cape Town directed by maestro Gregorio Fiasconaro, you would have been experiencing the fruits of their ingenuity and labours.
To try to write about the experiences of tens of thousands of prisoners of war would force one to generalise and to overlook the nuances and complexities of individual experiences. There is also the danger of ‘mythologising’ the Italian POW episode. I believe that a focus on individual stories will make the experiences of POWs more real and relatable to a modern audience and that is why I have decided to focus on five main characters.
My long research journey began in 2016, though by that time war veterans’ memories were fading and many had passed away. Most of the Italian POWs who spent time in South Africa returned to Italy after the war and my research funding did not allow me to undertake the long journey to interview them there.
At a certain point, though, I heard about Paolo Ricci. A former captive in the Zonderwater camp, he decided to remain in South Africa when the war came to an end. Born in 1920, Paolo was already 97 when I interviewed him in Pretoria in 2017.
I also visited Emilio Coccia at the Zonderwater Museum, where he is the chairman of the Zonderwater ex-POW Society and, through him, I came to hear about the memoirs that were available on the Zonderwater website. The life-changing events of the war and of captivity motivated many former POWs to document what they remembered. I was fortunate to happen upon these memoirs, even if they were all in Italian, a language I had no knowledge of at that time. Through the Società Dante Alighieri (Dante Alighieri Society), an organisation that promotes the Italian language and culture around the world, I was introduced to Tiarè Totaro. A professional translator, she patiently and accurately translated numerous, often long-winded texts into English, conveying the meaning and context. This process was essential to the book – without Tiarè, this indispensable resource would not have been accessible to me.
The memoirs of Raffaello Cei were one of those that had been translated by Tiarè. Raffaello had written down his story because, in his words, he wanted the youth to know the importance of peace. By a happy coincidence, I discovered that Raffaello was at that time still alive and well and living in Italy. We became Facebook friends and he shared many of his POW experiences directly with me via email. His assistance and kindness in helping me with my writing were invaluable and I shall never forget him.
Another memoir that I asked Tiarè to translate was Pietro Scottu’s recollections of the war and his time in South Africa. He was an adventurous man who had no regard for barbed-wire fences. Pietro and I exchanged several emails and in one he wrote that he looked forward to seeing this book in print. Living in Genoa, he wrote that he missed the beaches of the Eastern Cape and considered his time in South Africa to have been the ‘longest holiday of my life’.2
Luigi Pederzoli was not a soldier but an administrator in an Italian colony on the African continent. Upon his capture, he became known as POW 18962. His daughter, Emily Spenser (also known as Emilia Pederzoli), became a friend of mine, albeit from afar, and I am enormously grateful to her for her willingness to share Luigi’s experiences.
Then there is Giovanni Palermo, a man of conviction who never surrendered his beliefs in his leaders, causing him to endure harsher conditions in captivity. His son was gracious in letting me use Giovanni’s war memoirs.
These five men – Paolo, Raffaello, Pietro, Luigi and Giovanni – are the main characters in this book about the Italian POWs in South Africa. It is through their eyes that we gain an understanding of what it was like to be a prisoner at Zonderwater and Pietermaritzburg or in a remote work camp – or what it meant to be on the run from the authorities. Each of these five men had a unique and distinct experience in South Africa. Their stories cover different aspects of the Italian prisoner-of-war experience in the Union; and while they can never be completely representative, their accounts offer greater insights into the realities of being a captive in a foreign land.
Memories fade and when working with memoirs it quickly becomes clear that there is no such thing as historical accuracy, regardless of how hard one tries to verify information. Many of the experiences that were written about in the prisoners’ memoirs can be verified, to some extent, by archival documents, but not all. In such instances, I analysed, interpreted and imagined as accurately as I could. That said, I wrote from the perspective of a South African historian, fully aware that objectivity is an elusive goal.
If, on the pages of this book, the reader does not always find the same happy story they have come to know about the Italian POWs in South Africa, I ask that they bear in mind that I stayed true to the evidence I found in archival documents. After all, it is also the historian’s responsibility to confront the myths of the past.
I am immensely grateful to the veterans and their families for allowing me to tell their stories. Emilio Coccia’s willingness to share information and his many years of devoted work at the Zonderwater Museum have provided me with a crucial link to the past. The museum is situated where the Zonderwater POW camp used to be. Today, verdant grass and tall trees bring a sense of calm to the cemetery where some of those POWs were laid to rest.
At the South African National Museum of Military History (NMMH), Phindile Madida searched for and scanned hundreds of photographs for this book. Her professional approach and her friendly emails brightened my writing days. In Italy, Elisa Longorato of the Zonderwater Block ex-POW Association and daughter of a former POW sourced many photos for me and these add immense value and interest to this book. Emilia Pederzoli, the daughter of Luigi, also provided many photographs. I am endlessly thankful to all of them for sharing these priceless mementoes of that period. More photographs came from the archives of the International Red Cross and I appreciate their having given me permission to republish them.
I found most of the archival material at the archives of the Department of Defence’s Documentation Centre in Centurion. I am thankful to Steve D’Agrela and his colleagues, who supplied me with box after box of documents. To my fellow military historians, especially Ian van der Waag, Anri Delport, Evert Kleynhans, David Katz and Jacques de Vries, thank you for your continuing support. I also reserve a special word of thanks to Bill Nasson, whose writing remains a source of inspiration.
My gratitude also goes to my colleagues at the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, especially Ian Phimister, who motivates and encourages all of us who are fortunate enough to be associated with this group.
To my publisher, Annie Olivier: you are a wise woman and it is a joy to work with you. Thank you. My thanks also goes to everyone at Jonathan Ball Publishers who worked hard to get this book on the shelves.
André, without you this book would have been completed either sooner or later, but it would have been written without joy, so thank you.
In writing about war, my aim is to find examples of the many ways in which humanity prevails in times of conflict and strife. I hope that you, the reader, will find abundant examples of this in these pages.
INTRODUCTION
THE YEAR 1922 was a good one for Benito Mussolini – that was the year he transformed himself into a dictatorial Fascist leader. Previously, he had worked as a part-time teacher, an author and a newspaper editor, but he found it more rewarding to instigate controversy and practise subversion.
To ensure his success in taking political power, he assembled his own private army. These men became known as the Blackshirts1 and their devotion and loyalty to Mussolini was unmatched, no matter how many times he changed his ideas on politics or how many friends he declared to be his enemies. The Blackshirts carried out his orders without thinking and they engendered fear and intimidation and even murdered fellow Italians as they went about their business of placing Mussolini on a pedestal.
Towards the end of 1922, Mussolini was ready to take power and decided to march on Rome. He wanted to become the hero, the one who had liberated the Italian people from the monarchy, the socialists and the anarchists. On the way to Rome, the Blackshirts violently seized control of villages as they ransacked their way towards Rome, although their leader stayed away from the dirty work, travelling to Rome by train instead. As the Blackshirts gathered to confront the government’s military, Victor Emmanuel III, King of Italy, lost heart and appointed Mussolini as the country’s new Prime Minister.
And so began Mussolini’s dictatorship in Italy. Setting the country on a Fascist path, he made sure that the ideology reached every corner of the country. In essence, a Fascist state is one that is ruled by a dictator who does not tolerate opposition and turns the country into a one-party state. With no elections, individual and cultural liberty fall away and the state controls every aspect of life. Any resistance is dealt with brutally – Fascist states are known for their reliance on aggressive militarism to suppress any form of opposition. Fascists are extreme nationalists: They place their country’s interests above those of all others and, on this basis, they also justify their use of military aggression against neighbouring countries.
In most ways a typical strong man, Mussolini would not admit to any faults or failures; the march on Rome became a propaganda tool to warn those who dared to stand in the way of heroes on their way to carrying out their destiny. Inspired by the Caesars of ancient Rome, Mussolini wanted to create a new Roman Empire that could carry his ideas across the world. To do this, though, he needed a larger area over which to rule and a population that would obey him without question. He probably knew that he could not fully rely on the older generations for support, as they had seen him change political direction on more than one occasion in the past.
Those who had followed Mussolini’s career would have known him initially as a socialist but at the start of the First World War he abandoned that ideology in favour of militarism. The older generation, Mussolini knew, would have to be subjugated through laws and disciplinary action. If anyone were to have taken a closer look at his personal life, they would have noticed that Mussolini apparently did not care much for any political ideology, at least not when it came to personal relationships, as he had had affairs and a string of children with women who were known to be socialists and communists.
It was among the First World War veterans and the youth that Mussolini found his support: he could bend the young generation to his will and exploit the frustrations of the veterans to inspire loyalty.
Young and impressionable, the youth became the main target of Mussolini’s Fascist indoctrination. Even so, Italian children did not become Fascists overnight: it was through fear and intimidation, on the one hand, and love and loyalty, on the other, that the Fascists gained a fan base among the younger generations. Youth programmes and a formal education system instilled with Fascist propaganda helped to build Mussolini’s idea of the perfect Fascist.
The Italian youth of the early 1920s grew up mostly without knowing the joys of personal freedom. Italy was a poor country and most children worked to help make ends meet. For most of them, the idea of individual free will was irrelevant as the pressures of daily life took their toll. Furthermore, the children did not know any political system other than the one they were born into and so most of them obeyed the state and its leader without question. By the time the young boys became adolescents, ideas of war dominated their education and most young men became willing conscripts ready to die for Mussolini’s ideals.2
Obedience and conformity formed the basis of Fascism, a political ideology that became a way of life and one which permeated all aspects of Italian society. Of course, there were exceptions, but even among those who opposed Fascism, there was no way out in the case of military conscription: every young man had to do military service, first in the outlying Italian colonies in Africa and later when the country was dragged into the Second World War. Although Mussolini could not have predicted that a war would start in 1939, his emphasis on militarism prepared the young men and women for such an event. Those who were infants and toddlers when Mussolini marched on Rome in 1922 were just the right age to fight and die on the battlefields in the Second World War.
Since 1880, Italy had been competing with other European powers in the so-called Scramble for Africa. When he took power, Mussolini continued with his grand plan to re-establish the ancient Roman Empire. It was also an opportunity for him to put the theory of his Fascist and militaristic ideology into practice.3 For example, the day before his Blackshirt brigades invaded the East African country of Abyssinia,4 Mussolini reminded all Italians that Abyssinia was a ‘barbarian country’ and the inhabitants were ‘unworthy of ranking among civilized nations’.5
While most applauded Mussolini’s speech, not everyone who listened to him that day was convinced that he was right, but they were warned that the invasion of African colonies was a matter of ‘one heart alone! One will alone! One decision!’6 The Blackshirts carried out their orders to the letter: the level of brutality with which they did so is still being written about today.7 By the time the Second World War began in 1939, Italy had colonised Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland in East Africa, in addition to Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which were unified to form Italian Libya, in North Africa.
But whereas the colonies did much for Mussolini’s ego, they drained his economy. Still owing First World War debts to the United States and Britain, Italy declared a de jure default on its US debt.8 The economic situation in Italy was worsened by a growing population and an inability to produce enough food. Even though most Italians were engaged in agricultural production, they were forced to import essential foodstuffs that they could ill afford.9
With his nation struggling to cope, Mussolini had to tighten his grip to manage the growing discontent. Given that the majority of Italians are devout Catholics, the Prime Minister used the power of religion to convince his citizens that his dictatorship was justified and endorsed by the Pope. However, he was not religious in any way and as a young man he had gone as far as accusing priests of causing more harm to humanity than the tuberculosis virus.10 Far from working with the Church, Mussolini placed the Pope under severe pressure to support his ideology. Feigning cooperation with the Church was a purely political strategy.
It is not known to what extent Italians were aware of Mussolini’s hatred of religion – his first publication was an article entitled ‘God does not exist’. Nevertheless, he knew that Italians accepted, for the most part without question, the Pope’s leadership. By making sure that the Pope was under his influence, he assumed control over most of the population.
The fusion of religion and politics worked wonders for Mussolini’s propaganda machine. From as early as 1926, it became commonplace for his supporters to refer to him as il Duce (the Leader). He indoctrinated the population further to ensure that his image and that of Christ were merged into one. At the same time, his support from within the Church was also growing. By the early 1930s, his power over the Pope was complete and the Church began to collaborate with the Fascists. This meant that religious groups, such as the Catholic Action groups, who had previously been doing work among communities under the Church’s supervision, now had to do the Fascists’ bidding. Instead of continuing with their work of Christianising the population, the Catholic Action groups now acted as informants for the Fascist Police, letting them know of civilian transgressions against the State.11
When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 in Germany, he also imposed a Fascist regime on the nation. Today his style of National Socialist Fascism is mostly remembered for the horrors of the Holocaust. Anyone who did not fit into Hitler’s idea of the ideal human being, or who opposed his ideas, was ruthlessly disposed of. In this way, millions of Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals and political dissidents met their end in forced labour or extermination camps. The brutal race laws against the Jews can be traced back to Italy, where Catholic publications warned against Jewish domination. As the Nazi influence grew in Italy, Jews there began to feel increasingly oppressed. By the 1930s, the situation had become so bad in Italy that Mussolini’s Jewish mistress of 19 years fled to Paris and then Argentina.12
In the southern hemisphere, South Africa had also experienced its share of turbulence in the first decades of the 20th century. At the turn of the century, the two Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State had lost their battle for independence against the British Empire. By 1910, the two British colonies of Natal and the Cape merged with the two Afrikaner republics to form the Union of South Africa. However, it would take more than political unification to unite the population entirely.
The First World War broke out in 1914, with wounds from the South African War still festering among Afrikaners. When the Union government decided to support Britain in the war, a rebellious group of Afrikaners rose up, angry that their government was siding with their former enemy. The Afrikaner Rebellion of 1914, and its suppression, caused further divisions among the people of the Union.
By the time the First World War ended in 1918, the world had lost its innocence. In Europe, political leaders and great parts of the populations of Italy, Germany and Spain began to seek order from chaos in Fascism. South Africa, although far removed from the events in Europe, also saw a growing rise in Fascism among parts of the population.
In 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, many Afrikaners celebrated the exodus of Boer trekkers from the Cape Colony a century before, in 1838, with the symbolic Great Trek. With this, they reaffirmed their wish for an independent Afrikaner state. In the wake of this nationalistic outpouring the Ossewabrandwag (Oxwagon Sentinel) emerged.13 It insisted on being a cultural movement, although in due course it would also start a paramilitary wing called the Stormjaers (Storm Troops). The Ossewabrandwag had pro-Nazi leanings, and in many ways it stood for similar ideals as Mussolini and Hitler.
Smuts was acutely aware of the rise of Fascism and he must have realised that if war broke out in Europe, his men would be fighting a physical war on the battlefront while he would have to fight a propaganda war on the home front.
With the start of the Second World War in 1939, it was touch and go for Smuts, since Parliament was not overly enthusiastic about the prospect of the country participating in the war. Presented with a choice, however, ministers favoured Smuts, if only with a majority of 13. Still, it was enough for South Africa, at that time a British Dominion, to offer its support for Britain’s war effort on the side of the Allies. However, Smuts wanted to avoid a repetition of the Afrikaner Rebellion of 1914, when former Boer generals had campaigned against the country’s participation in the First World War on the side of Britain. Unlike in 1914, though, this time the government called for volunteers to fight.
Despite Smuts’s careful approach to war, he had many critics, among them the previous prime minister, JBM Hertzog, the Ossewabrandwag and later clandestine militant organisations such as the Stormjaers and the Terreurgroep (Terror Group). The paramilitary groups embarked on acts of sabotage, hoping that doing so would dissuade Smuts from taking the country to war and young men from volunteering. The campaign started with a bang when home-made bombs were used to blow up pylons in January 1942. This was followed by an anti-climactic crusade of cutting telephone wires and disrupting the electricity supply.14 In some cases, fights between Smuts men and Ossewabrandwag members broke out on the streets.
While the Fascist leaders in Italy and Germany pressed their populations into submission, the South African government was more lenient in how it handled opposition in the 1930s and early 1940s, at least towards the two white races of the country.
In contrast to members of the Ossewabrandwag, many young men, mostly English-speaking, were eager to join the Union Defence Force (UDF) to ‘do their bit’ in the war. Some were after adventure while others were pressed into signing up after a few beers with friends. Despite many Afrikaners’ misgivings about fighting on the side of the British, many of them also signed up as they felt pressured by economic hardship.15
The opposition parties and the Ossewabrandwag continued their resistance to Smuts’s war effort for the duration of the war. In 1943, for instance, Smuts was forced to put off a trip to London because the political situation on the home front required his full attention. In January 1943, he wrote as follows to Winston Churchill about the coming election in South Africa and the precarious situation he found himself in:
As you know, my government is a coalition of three parties, united only on the issue of carrying on the war and my leadership is perhaps the only bond keeping the Parliamentary majority together … Parties now in Government coalition may not be in agreement on other policies than the war and may fight for their own platforms and interests and divide our vote. The Opposition sections, although much divided amongst themselves, will almost certainly all combine against me on the war issue and my own party strength is not such that I can take any risks. Main planks of Opposition are neutrality, republicanism and separation from the Commonwealth … A decisive defeat for the Opposition policies would go far to stabilise the future of South Africa and its relations to Empire.16
WHILE THE SMUTS government fought against Fascism beyond its borders, Fascists also lived within them. Despite these complexities, a large number of volunteers joined the UDF to fight, first in East and North Africa, and later in Italy.
Despite the political divides, the economy was doing relatively well, with especially gold production putting the country on a profitable path. In 1941, for instance, South Africa reached a peak in gold production of 450 tonnes.17 International investments, mainly from Britain and the United States, and also mergers between local and international companies, led to the establishment of large mining and industrial companies such as Anglo-American18 and African Explosives and Chemical Industries (AECI) in the years before the Second World War.
An added benefit was that South Africa was geographically far removed from the theatres of war and did not suffer damage from any battles in its territory, bombing raids and the like.19 With the Union of South Africa being such a young country, the nation was still in its infancy and its citizens were still a long way from viewing everyone who lived within its borders as a single nation. Racial and social unity were unthinkable concepts. It is no surprise, then, that when Smuts brought the country into the war, some of its citizens began their own fight for freedom on the home front.
Once Mussolini declared war against the Allies, it meant that Italy’s African colonies were also drawn into the war. The UDF was deployed to fight the Italian forces first in East Africa and after that the Germans and the Italians in North Africa. It was there that thousands upon thousands of Italian men, soldiers and colonial administrators were captured.
The Italian POWs were sent from East and North Africa to different Commonwealth countries and British Dominions. Smuts was enthusiastic about receiving the POWs: for him this was an opportunity to show that, despite its divisions and the plotting by the Ossewabrandwag, South Africa was in fact a loyal supporter of the British war effort. Because Smuts also knew that the POWs would be a useful source of cheap labour, he offered to take far more of them than the country was able to accommodate at that time. In Smuts’s mind, the POWs would replace the UDF volunteers for the duration of the war and in this way the economy of the country could remain on track until peace returned. Smuts also believed his willingness to take in so many POWs would be seen as an act of loyalty to the British Empire. He was eager to show that there was more to South Africa than the divisions between those in support of, and those opposed to, the country’s participation in the war.
No doubt, in taking on the POWs, Smuts had a long-term plan but he failed to consider a number of practical matters. First, the thousands of POWs had to eat every day, they needed suitable places to live and sleep and they required medical attention, to say nothing of their desire to communicate with their families back in Italy. Complicating matters somewhat was the fact that the Union had to provide these needs in such a way as to satisfy the inspectors who represented the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), whose task it was to ensure that the stipulations of the Geneva Convention were met.
Secondly, the divisions in South African society were difficult enough to manage, but add thousands of Italian POWs to the mix, most of whom had grown up in a Fascist dictatorship, and the stage was set for further tensions to develop. Did Smuts and his cabinet plan for the possible threat to the Union if Fascist POWs met like-minded farmers when they were sent out to help with harvesting? How sure were they that the guards who looked after the POWs were not Fascists themselves and would not help their captives to escape?
The popular thinking at the time was that the Italians were ‘docile’ and their habit of surrendering in large numbers did nothing to contradict this belief. Because of this, the authorities in the Union were perhaps a touch too lenient when the first Italian POWs arrived in March 1941. By the time the first POWs began their return journeys to Italy after the war, the military authorities were displaying a very different attitude towards them – the result of many blunders, mishaps and a string of disenchantments that are described in this book.
More than 70 years after the war, most South Africans and Italians seem to recall only positive tales about the POWs’ time in the Union. According to some, POWs and UDF guards formed friendships as the captives settled down happily in their prison camps. Those who were sent out to work on farms to help with the harvesting or to clear farmland of prickly pears and other unwanted plants apparently did so with a spring in their step. According to these accounts, when meeting Union citizens, the POWs were always on their best behaviour and presented themselves as gentlemen who wanted only the best for their captor hosts. These happy stories are found in memoirs and in the anecdotes shared by war veterans and civilians after the war. Yet they capture only a part of the story. The nostalgia in these memories tends to show a longing for a romantic past – which is not entirely true.
The archives reveal another side to the story. Thanks to the evidence found in war-time documents, I was able to bridge the gap between these nostalgic recollections and the actual historical events. It is the historian’s duty to follow the evidence and, in this case, it tells of many unhappy POWs who lived in terrible conditions at the Zonderwater camp; of conflict between guards and POWs. It also tells of prisoners who were desperate to escape, some running away from the authorities, others towards the love they had found in farmhouses across the country. Illegal socialising – and more – between POWs and local women occurred at a regular rate, mostly by mutual consent.
While many of the long-suppressed Italians experienced their first taste of individual freedom in the Union, others found it impossible to free themselves from the constraints of years of Fascist indoctrination. These men believed it was their duty to convince the South Africans that Fascism was the best ideology to follow and to this end they embarked on a mission to convert everyone they came into contact with. Using ingenious propaganda methods, they even enlisted the help of eager locals.
On the other hand, those POWs who embraced their new-found individuality outside a Fascist regime were met with anger and, in some instances, knife-wielding fellow POWs who refused to forsake Fascism. Many simply wanted to make the most of what this freedom could offer and, as a result, the Zonderwater camp saw daily escapes, with many POWs being aided and abetted by South African guards.
The true story of the Italian POWs in South Africa is a combination of the well-behaved, helpful and reliable wartime prisoners and the ruthless, inept, angry and often sad captives. Within this range, the physical evidence of their time in this country can be found. Their contributions to the harvesting schemes were enormous, as was their work on road-building projects, the most well-known of which is the Du Toit’s Kloof Pass in what is today the Western Cape Province. Others brought their craftsmanship and created handsome buildings and striking artworks and showcased their musical talent.
Hundreds of POWs first learned to read and write while in the Union. In a sense, all of them were given an opportunity to free themselves of Fascist propaganda and to nurture what was unique to each of them. Some grabbed this opportunity, others did not. Despite often leaving some of the UDF command with their hands in their hair, the prisoners’ return to Italy after the war left a void in South African society.
PRINCIPAL PERSONALITIES
ON THE ITALIAN SIDE:
Giovanni Palermo, the ‘true prisoner’ of Zonderwater prisoner-of-war camp
Pietro Scottu (and his dog, Chippie), the escapee
Luigi Pederzoli, husband to Barbara and father to Ennio and Emilia
Paolo Ricci, a tailor at Zonderwater
Raffaello Cei, a chef at the Pietermaritzburg camp
ON THE SOUTH AFRICAN SIDE:
Jan Christiaan Smuts,Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa
Brigadier General Leonard (Len) Beyers,Adjutant General of the Union Defence Force
Colonel David de Wet, commandant of Zonderwater from September 1941, when he took over from Colonel G Rennie, to December 1942
Colonel Hendrik F Prinsloo, commandant of Zonderwater from January 1943 to 1947
Professor HH Sonnabend, Director of Welfare at Zonderwater
Lieutenant (later Captain) JA Ball, Welfare officer at Zonderwater
Lieutenant Colonel L Blumberg,Head of Medical Services at Zonderwater
1
YOUNG FASCISTS IN ITALY’S AFRICAN COLONIES
BENITO MUSSOLINI LIKED to show off his body, especially in propaganda photographs. After all, as a Fascist dictator who wanted to create the ideal man, he had to set an example. Photographs of the bare-chested Mussolini were supposed to inspire Italian men and fill Italian women with awe. These photographs showed the population the type of man their leader required them to be; the athletic and virile hero who works hard and who looks obediently to Mussolini, il Duce, for leadership.
While Mussolini was certainly ambitious and his propaganda campaign was consistent and focused, he did not manage to convince all men of fighting age. Living in Fascist Italy was difficult, food was scarce, and everyone worked hard for very little. These were the circumstances in the 1920s and the 1930s in which Italian children grew up in. Among the millions of boys growing up in Italy during this time were five who, at some time or another during the Second World War, would end up in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps in the Union of South Africa. It is their stories that we follow in these pages.
GIOVANNI PALERMO
The first of them, Giovanni Palermo, lived his life according to Fascist principles. The textbook Book and Musket, Perfect Fascist, taught children everything they needed to know about being good citizens in a Fascist country. The title of the book was also used as a propaganda slogan, ‘book’ referring to Fascist education and ‘musket’ implying war. It dominated Giovanni’s existence and hinted at the undertone of militarism that was so prevalent during Mussolini’s dictatorship. A sergeant in the 116th Regiment of the Marmarica Division, Giovanni identified with the Arditi Unit, whose members were known as ‘the daring ones’ during the First World War. Never surrendering his faith in Mussolini, Giovanni became one of the so-called true prisonerswho rejected any form of cooperation with the ‘English’, which for him included everyone in the Union Defence Force (UDF).
PIETRO SCOTTU
In stark contrast, Pietro Scottu had no emotional attachments to Mussolini. Growing up in the coastal city of Genoa in the north-west of the country, he became self-reliant at a very early age. His father died even before he was born and with only a rudimentary education, Pietro began contributing to his family’s income. Ever the optimist, he regarded ‘such [working] experience the best type of school for learning how to cope with the various situations one may find oneself involved in life’.1 When his conscription papers arrived, Pietro was assigned to the driving school, a skill that would become very useful a few years later. Pietro began his service in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, at that time an important centre of Italy’s East African Empire.
The views of other Italian conscripts were moderate in comparison to those of Giovanni and Pietro. Childhood experiences shaped their view of the world, despite Mussolini’s best efforts to capture their minds.
LUIGI PEDERZOLI
Luigi Pederzoli’s childhood was marked by tragedy and hardship. Born on 30 June 1914 in Gattatico, near Parma, Luigi’s formative years were characterised by the devastation of the First World War. At the end of the war, he lost his mother and newborn brother to the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. Luigi also became ill, but he was ‘lucky’ by not becoming one of the 410 000 children who lost their lives in Italy.2 In the difficult times that followed the war, Luigi’s family cultivated silkworms, tomatoes and grapes in order to survive.
His father remarried but Luigi rebelled when his stepmother took control of the household and as a result he was sent to a boarding school in Bergamo. By the time he emerged from school he had been saturated with Mussolini’s Fascist ideology – the aim of the school system and the military structures being to create young men in the image of a so-called ‘Superman’, the Fascists’ ideal form of masculinity.3 As a young boy he would have had no choice in joining the youth organisations designed to indoctrinate. Although he ‘escaped’ twice from boarding school, he was conscripted in 1932 shortly after his 18th birthday.
Luigi Pederzoli and his fellow soldiers arrive at Port Said, 1936(Photo courtesy Emilia Pederzoli)
Luigi began his military career with a new AGFA camera and a notebook, because he was determined to write a book about his experiences. He must have been hopeful about the future: not only did military service bring relief from poverty and rejection, but he was also going to see the world. In 1935 he was conscripted into the Colonial Service and decided that he would remain in the service in a permanent capacity once his two compulsory years had come to an end. He stayed on in the Italy’s African colonies, was promoted and landed a comfortable office job. By 1936 he was in Mogadishu and in 1938 he married his sweetheart, Barbara, by proxy. She joined him in Ethiopia the following year.
Luigi Pederzoli and his wife Barbara shortly after she joined him in Gimma, Ethiopia (Photo courtesy Emilia Pederzoli)
PAOLO RICCI
When I interviewed him, the soft-spoken and friendly Paolo Ricci tactfully avoided the matter of his personal political affiliations. Born in Savignano on 29 March 1920, his boyhood was a relatively happy one and he recalled his early life under Mussolini’s dictatorship as a time that was ‘very nice [because] Mussolini did really, really good things’. Here he was referring to state-controlled welfare services, education, work permits and even compulsory attendance at mass rallies. If someone were thought to be disloyal, their prospects would be severely restricted or even halted completely.4
At the age of 20, Paolo left home for the first time to join the 26th Regiment Artillery of Rimini. He underwent a mere ten days’ training before his regiment was sent to Africa. Years later, as he reflected on his readiness for war, he said, ‘you’re not prepared for [war] … anyway, one thing and the other and on top of that we lost the war … we chased a lot of them, they chased a lot of us, up and down, up and down, you know how the war is …’.5
RAFFAELLO CEI
Raffaello Cei came from Lucca, a town on the north-west coast of Italy. There, every week, a group of men calling themselves the ‘flask society’ would gather in a café to discuss politics. Raffaello, the son of one of these men, remembered them as a harmless mixed group of blue-collar workers, farmers and artisans who would drink wine and smoke cigars at a table in the café while exchanging opinions as ‘moderate democrats’.6
Now, of course, Fascism forbade open conversation or any form of dissent, so when they were found out, some members of the ‘flask society’ were forced to drink castor oil and others were beaten. From that day onwards, Raffaello received his political education through ‘hints’ from his father, because his mother banned any such discussions. His conscription papers arrived shortly before his 21st birthday and he left his home town of Lucca for the first time in 1941.
After receiving his first army pay, he considered himself a ‘soldier in all respects’, he says. Raffaello remembers his training in Ferrara as a lonely time. On the one hand, he missed his mother’s cooking, especially as he noticed, even at that early stage of the war, that the Italian army was unable to feed its soldiers properly. On the other hand, he was eager for his adventure to begin, especially when he remembered how his mother used to warn him, ‘“be careful, child, always be careful” … my parents were afraid. They feared for my life,’7 he wrote.
Looking back at his training, Raffaello later wrote in his memoirs that he was ‘like a child playing at war, completely taken by his toys and weapons that shoot without killing. I hadn’t realized that war, the real kind, was looming above my head, and that the entirety of my small world and brief youth were about to be torn apart for good’. He was speaking for many young Italian men in saying they were not really aware of the ‘black cloud that loomed over Europe’.8
Italian colonies in North Africa
GIOVANNI PALERMO AND PAOLO RICCI (LIBYA)
In 1936 Italian Somaliland, Eritrea and Ethiopia were combined into one country to form Italian East Africa. To the south lay the British colony of Kenya, to Kenya’s north-east lay the smaller British Somaliland and to the west was what was then known as Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. On the coast of the Mediterranean Sea lay the Italian colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania that were unified to form Italian Libya: this Italian territory shared a border with the British-controlled Egypt.
With the colonies of countries on opposite sides of the war bordering each other, the stage was set for Africa to be drawn into the Second World War. Yet when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 and Britain declared war, Mussolini hesitated. It was nothing new for him to first wait and see which way the wind blew. Already in 1937, an author described him as a ‘formidable combination of turncoat, ruffian, and a man of genius in modern history’.9 By 1940 German forces had achieved significant victories and when France fell to the Nazis, Mussolini was finally convinced that he should join the war on Hitler’s side.
Secretly, Smuts must have been relieved to have had the extra time Mussolini’s hesitation had given him. In 1939 the UDF was small and not prepared for any great battles. When Mussolini declared war on the Allies, he also dragged his African colonies into the conflict. The British and Commonwealth forces responded by sending divisions to those colonies that bordered on the Italian Empire in Africa. Since UDF volunteers had taken an oath to fight anywhere in Africa, the 1st South Africa Division joined the British Middle East Command under Field Marshal Archibald Wavell to participate in the East African Campaign. To the north, the Western Desert Campaign also began in June 1940, but it would be some time before the UDF would send a division to this theatre of war.
In the meantime, combined British forces launched Operation Compass with the objective of defeating the Italian 10th Army in Libya. The committed Fascist Giovanni Palermo and the soft-spoken Paolo Ricci were both in the 10th Army. Although he would never admit it, Giovanni met his match against the British and Australian troops at the Battle of Bardia in Libya in January 1941. This battle was part of Operation Compass and was the first British military operation of the Western Desert campaign. Under the command of Lieutenant General Annibale Bergonzoli, the Italians numbered more than 40 000 against the 16 000 men in the Allied force, yet the Australians achieved their first significant victory of the war here.
A POW’s artistic depiction of his battlefield experience (Photo courtesy NMMH)
Giovanni fought with a sense of purpose and commitment and if it was up to him, he would have defeated the entire Allied force single-handedly. In his memoirs, he described his comrades-in-arms as being ‘full of ardour, of frank feelings and absolute self-denial, leading up to extreme sacrifice’ during the battle. According to him, the Italian forces fought like ‘a single, majestic block, ever more formidable, able to stop the movements of the overwhelming enemy, made up by hundreds of people’.10
Giovanni was fighting not only for survival, but also to preserve Italy’s honour. His descriptions of the Battle of Bardia were probably coloured by years of Fascist propaganda as he could see nothing but acts of bravery on the Italian side. He described scenes of great heroism, of men on foot attacking tanks and of his commanding officer, with a severe head wound, jumping on an oncoming tank, his ‘face dripping with blood, and with new enthusiasm and impetus, towards the top, onto the turret officer (the latter also worthy of admiration for the face-to-face gun duel, but perhaps it was just the effect of an abundance of alcohol) and annihilates him, screaming: “Die!” and then, lifeless, he exclaims: “VIVA L’ITALIA!”11
Unfortunately, Giovanni was captured on the first day of the three-day battle and was left with the traumatic memory of three friends having died next to him. The first days of his captivity were equally harrowing. An Australian serviceman searched his pockets for explosives, and then led him to a bomb crater where he spent the next two days with fellow captives. Around them, however, the battle continued, and it was not long before a shell hit their makeshift holding pen. It was packed with prisoners by then, and Giovanni remembered the harrowing scene: ‘legs, arms, heads, blood and brains were coiled up into a great mass of flesh’.12
Instinctively, those who could run from this scene did so, but the Australian guards thought they were attempting a mass escape and opened fire. During this chaos, Giovanni witnessed an act of kindness when an Italian officer asked, deliriously, how the battle was progressing. An Australian serviceman, somewhat bewildered at the man’s tenacity, replied ‘Well!’
In 1940, Paolo Ricci’s regiment had some successes against the French in Tunisia, but when they were transferred to Tobruk in Libya they again met the Australians, who, according to Paolo, were ugly people, remnants from prisons, and almost always drunk.13 It was here that his luck ran out.
Heavy fighting at Sollum on the north-eastern border between Egypt and Libya was followed by the Italians’ retreat to Bardia, which they soon lost to the Australians in early 1941. Back in Tobruk, the only Italian warship, the San Gorgio, was sunk during a brief battle. By now Paolo had been in North Africa for almost a year, but the military experience he had acquired during this time could not reverse his bad luck: he was taken prisoner on 21 January 1941 when Tobruk was captured by the British forces.
This Mediterranean harbour town was of great importance to both the British and the Italians, because whoever controlled it, was able to ship men and materiel to the battle areas. Taking Tobruk in 1941 meant that a further 25 000 Italian prisoners fell into the hands of the British. The Australian forces settled in at Tobruk to ensure it would remain in Allied hands; shortly afterwards, the British Western Desert Force declared Operation Compass a resounding success.
The defeat could not have come at a worse time for Mussolini; he was visiting Hitler when he was informed of the losses. It was at this point that Hitler realised Mussolini’s forces needed help in Libya and he dispatched Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel to deal with the British threat.14 This development made subsequent victories in the region much more difficult to achieve for the Allied forces, who soon began to speak of Rommel as the Desert Fox.
Italian battle sites and temporary Italian prisoner-of-war camps
PIETRO SCOTTU (ERITREA)
In the meantime, the UDF were fighting valiantly in East Africa along with British and other Commonwealth forces. They enjoyed one victory after another, struggling with the harsh terrain almost more than with the enemy forces. The South Africans approached the East African Empire from the south, while in the north, British Somaliland came under attack from the Italians. Lying next to the Red Sea, Italian Eritrea was especially important because the British had to maintain control of the Suez Canal.
Just as Operation Compass drew to its conclusion in Libya, and extra Allied troops could be sent to Eritrea, Pietro Scottu’s conscription period came to an end. However, the war prevented his return to Italy, so he was stuck in Massawa, an Eritrean naval town. Morale in the Italian army reached a low point when news of the defeat at Tobruk reached Eritrea and when British forces destroyed the aqueduct that had been their only source of water, Pietro’s unit surrendered. It was March 1941 and Pietro’s time as a master escapee was about to begin.
When Pietro and his friend and ‘partner in crime’, Guerrea, heard that the British needed transport for the captured Italian materiel, they volunteered their services as drivers with a FIAT 634 and a ‘liberated’ Ceirano 50 truck ‘that still had a splash of librification (sic) system and an external hand brake such as that of a horse carriage’.15 Cunningly, they placed themselves in the middle of the long convoy, which allowed them to sneak away without the guards at the front or the back noticing their escape.
They made a dash for a local Italian doctor who had a concession of land for cultivation purposes. The two escapees offloaded most of their supplies, no doubt bringing much needed relief to the family. In an effort to secure their fortunes, Pietro and Guerrea sold the Fiat to an Arab businessman for 34 000 lire, which they ‘obviously’ split between themselves.16 That night the two escapees slept in the middle of a prickly pear plantation to avoid being attacked by the local Shiftà population, whom they suspected were being ‘armed and exploited by the British to prove that the Italians were no longer in the local population’s favour’.
When the doctor’s son-in-law suddenly disappeared, the two escapees thought they were endangering the doctor’s family and so they decided to surrender themselves to the British at Fort Baldissera. Shortly afterwards Pietro and his friend were separated. Pietro was sent to the Tessenei transit camp, where he noted with disgust that there were ‘no luxuries whatsoever!!’ In fact, they were provided with raw food and left to their own devices.
LUIGI PEDERZOLI (ETHIOPIA)
In Ethiopia, Luigi Pederzoli, who had joined the Colonial Service, had settled into a happy life with his wife, Barbara, who had since given birth to their son, Ennio. Luigi was a member of the 70th Battalion, 1st Company, and his days consisted of planning new towns in the Galla-Sidamo District of Ethiopia.
