Unification of Italy and ethnic cleansing: Fenestrelle, Savoy concentration camp

Unification of Italy and ethnic cleansing: Fenestrelle, Savoy concentration camp

A pounding propaganda, which still persists today, tries to justify the liberal cure. This is how history was transformed, in the words of Leo XIII, into a “conspiracy against the truth”.

source: Stefania Maffeo, extracts from “Piedmontese ethnic cleansing: the Savoy concentration camps”.

Five thousand two hundred and twelve death sentences, 6564 arrests, 54 countries razed to the ground, 1 million dead. These are the figures of the repression carried out after the unification of Italy by the Savoys. The first ethnic cleansing of Western modernity carried out on the southern populations dictated by the Pica Law, promulgated by the Minghetti government on 15 August 1863 “for the repression of brigandage in the South”. This law established, under the aegis of Savoy, war tribunals for the South and the soldiers had carte blanche: the shootings, even of old people, women and children, became an ordinary and not extraordinary thing. A genocide whose scope is mitigated only by escape and forced emigration, in the inexorable commandment of destiny: “O brigands, o emigrants”.

Lemkin, who defined the first concept of genocide, argued: «Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation… it intends to designate a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at destroying the essential foundations of the life of national groups. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion and the economic life of national groups and the destruction of personal security, freedom, health, dignity and even of the lives of individuals…not because of their individual qualities, but as members of the national group”.

Deportations, the nightmare of imprisonment, persecution of the Catholic Church, desecration of temples, mass shootings, rapes, even little girls (daughters of “bandits”) forced into prison irons. A page not yet written is that relating to the prisons in which the “vanquished” soldiers were locked up. The Piedmontese government had to face the problem of prisoners, 1700 officers of the Bourbon army (in a satirical newspaper of the time a caricature of the Bourbon army was represented: the soldier with the lion’s head, the officer with the donkey’s head , the headless general) and 24,000 soldiers, not counting those who still resisted in the fortresses of Gaeta, Messina and Civitella del Tronto.

Thousands of these men were concentrated in the depots of Naples or in prisons, then transferred with the decree of 20 January 1861, which established “Depots of officers of every weapon of the disbanded army of the Two Sicilies”. La Marmora ordered the prosecutors to «do not release any of the prisoners without the consent of the army». For the most part they were crammed into ships worse than animalsi (even though many traveled the entire journey on foot) and were disembarked in Genoa, from where, crossing the Via Assarotti, torn and hungry, theythey were sorted into various concentration camps established in Fenestrelle, S. Maurizio Canavese, Alessandria, in the fort of S. Benigno in Genoa, Milan, Bergamo, Forte di Priamar near Savona, Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ascoli Piceno and other locations in the North .

In those places, real concentration camps, but established for “correction and suitability for service” treatment, the prisoners, barely covered in cloth rags, could eat dirty slop with a bit of stale black bread, undergoing treatments truly beastly, every type of physical and moral atrocity. For over ten years, everyone who was captured, over 40,000, thousands were deliberately made to die from starvation, hardship, mistreatment and disease.

Those deported to Fenestrelle, a fortress located almost two thousand meters above sea level, in the Piedmont mountains, on the left of the Chisone, officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers (all those Bourbon soldiers who did not want to finish their compulsory military service in the Savoy army, all those who Fenestrelle 1 openly declared loyalty to King Francis II, those who swore open resistance to the Piedmontese) suffered the most ferocious treatment.

Fenestrelle, more than a fort, was a group of forts, protected by very high bastions and joined by a staircase, carved into the rock, of 4000 steps. It was a gigantic bastioned curtain to which the natural harshness of the places and the severity of the climate gave it a sinister appearance. It was as scary as relegation to Siberia. The inmates also attempted to organize a revolt on August 22, 1861 to take over the fortress, but it was discovered in time and the attempt resulted in harsher sentences with the most forced with 16 kilo balls and chains, shackles and chains.

They were crowded together with murderers, priests, young men, old men, miserable commoners and men of culture. Without straw mattresses, without blankets, without light. A prisoner was killed by a sentry just because he had uttered insults against the Savoys. Vthe windows and fixtures were removed to “re-educate” the segregated people in the cold. Ragged and poorly nourished, it was usual to see them leaning against the walls, in a desperate attempt to capture the shy winter sun’s rays, perhaps remembering with nostalgia the heat of other Mediterranean climates.

Often the imprisoned people did not even know what they were accused of and all their assets were seized. Often the reason they were captured was just to steal the money they had. Many were not even registered, so only after many years were they tried and convicted without any logical explanation.

Very few managed to survive: life in those conditions, also due to the freezing temperatures they had to endure without any shelter, did not exceed three months. And it was precisely in Fenestrelle that the majority of those brave soldiers were cowardly imprisoned who, in execution of the agreements made after the surrender of Gaeta, should instead have been left free at the end of hostilities. After six months of heroic resistance they had to suffer infamous treatment which began immediately after they were disarmed, being robbed of everything and cowardly insulted by the Piedmontese troops.

Liberation occurred only with death and the bodies were dissolved in quicklime placed in a large basin located at the back of the church which stood at the entrance to the fort. A death without honor, without tombs, without gravestones and without memory, so that no traces of the crimes committed would remain. Even today, entering Fenestrelle, the inscription is still visible on a wall:

“Everyone is worth not what they are but what they produce”.

A further step forward in the study of this unclear phase of post-unification was made recently, when a researcher found documents at theHistorical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs attesting that, in 1869, the Italian government wanted to purchase an island from Argentina to confine the prisoner Neapolitan soldiers there, so there must have still been many of them. These men from the South ended their days in a foreign and hostile land, certainly with the moving memory and poignant nostalgia of their distant homeland. Many of them were little more than boys.

It was the policy of criminalizing dissent, the refusal to admit the existence of values ​​other than one’s own, the refusal to deny the “freed” from still believing in the values ​​in which they had believed. The fighters of the Two Sicilies, the soldiers of the former Bourbon army and the many civilians detained in the “Savoy concentration camps”, men largely anonymous due to the pale memory that has come down to us, lived a heroism made of concrete gestures, and in many ordinary cases, to which anyone who is capable of faithfully fulfilling their task to the end, knowing how to oppose subversive attempts, with the inner freedom of someone who does not allow themselves to be enslaved by the “spirit of the time” is no stranger.

some testimonials:

Francesco Proto Carafa, Duke of Maddaloni, argued in Parliament: “But what do I say about a government that tears away from the bosom of their families so many old generals, so many honored officers only on the suspicion that they harbored love for their unfortunate King, and relegates them to live in the fortresses of Alessandria and in other inhospitable lands of Piedmont…I am they treated worse than the convicts. Why does the Piedmontese government have to explain so much luxury of cruelty to them? Why should he have to torture men born in Italy like us with hunger, inertia and prison?”.

But the motion presented was not authorized for publication in the Parliamentary Acts, prohibiting its discussion in the chamber [3]. General Enrico Della Rocca, who led the siege of Gaeta, in his autobiography reports a letter to his wife, in which he says: “They will leave, soldiers and officers, for Naples and Turin…”, specifying, regarding the surrender of Capua, “…the troops were set on foot to Naples to be transported to one of the ports of HM the King of Sardinia. There were 11,500 men” [4].

Alfredo Comandini, Mazzini’s deputy during the Giolittian era, who compiled “Italy in the Hundred Years (1801-1900) of the 19th century illustrated day by day”, reports an engraving from 1861, taken from “Mondo Illustrato” of that year, depicting Bourbon soldiers detained in the camp of concentration of S. Maurizio, a town located 25 kilometers from Turin. He notes that, in September 1861, when the camp was visited by the ministers Bastogi and Ricasoli, 3,000 soldiers from the Two Sicilies were detained and in the following month they had reached 12,447 men.

On 18 October 1861 some military and civilian prisoners capitulated in Gaeta and prisoners in Ponza wrote to Biagio Cognetti, director of “Stampa Meridionale“, to report the state of detention they were in, in clear violation of the Capitulation, which provided for the return of the prisoners to their families 15 days after the fall of Messina and Civitella del Tronto and 8 months had already passed.

On 19 November 1861, General Manfredo Fanti sent a dispatch to the Count of Cavour asking to rent steamers abroad to transport 40,000 prisoners of war to Genoa. Cavour thus wrote to lieutenant Farini two days later: “I have asked La Marmora to himself visit the Neapolitan prisoners who are in Milan”, thus admitting the existence of another prison camp located in the Lombard capital to house soldiers Neapolitans.

This is La Marmora’s response: “…I must not let you ignore that the Neapolitan prisoners demonstrate a terrible spirit. Out of 1600 who are in Milan, there will not be 100 who agree to take up service. They are all covered in scabies and verminia… and what’s more, they show an aversion to taking service from us. Yesterday, to some who arrogantly claimed to have the right to go home because they did not want to take a new oath, having sworn loyalty to Francesco Secondo, I strongly reproached them that for their King they had fled, and now for the common homeland, and for the Chosen kings refused to serve, who were a bunch of chari… that we had found a way to bring them to reason.”

—————————————————————–

also worth reading: Fulvio Izzo The Savoy concentration camps ed. Against the current

interview with Fulvio Izzo