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This is an article that I might consider publishing in the Annual Report of Monte San MartinoTrust, a British Charity in London, established in recognition of the Italians who helped prisonersof war escape from the Prisoners of War camps in Italy during WWII.

It was the end of November 1944, the dead of winter in the flat wet land near the Adriatic coast inproximity of the Gothic Line which marked the frontline between the German and the Allied

Armies in occupied Italy. Young Decimo Triossi was pedalling on his rusty bicycle with a heavyheart. He had been sent by his mother to Madonna dellAlbero, a hamlet some 20 km away, asthe bearer of very sad news.

One of his brothers had been kil led in action. The fatal letter had come to his mother, and now hewas to break this news to his brothers wife who lived at Madonna dellAlbero with their two-year-old son. Not a suitable task for a fourteen-year-old, but the other men of the family were all atlarge, fighting the Germans with the partisans of Captain Bulow (the battle name of ArrigoBoldrini, who was to liberate Ravenna a few days later), and besides, in time of war people haveto grow up fast.

Decimo was pedalling slower than usual and the bicycle seemed heavier, whether because ofthe muddy road or of the riders state of mind it is difficult to say, but he eventually reached hisdestination.

The place had been no mans land for some time because the frontline ran right in the middle ofthe hamlet. The Germans were entrenched to the north and the All ies a few miles to the south. Ariver divided the two armies, and both sides used to patrol the hamlet, though they had notclashed there.

Despite the warnings and orders issued by the Germans, the villagers could not be prevailedupon leaving their homes. They simply refused, saying this was their only home, they had

nowhere else to go.

When Decimo got there, it was immediately clear that something had happened. The Germanshad been chased by the Allies further up north and the hamlet had been liberated. The scenewas now more animated than it used to be, and yet very silent. A number of people had comefrom the neighbouring villages and isolated farms. A small crowd had gathered near a barn andDecimo approached it. Nobody was speaking there. Inside the barn, as soon as the boy couldstep in, he saw dozens of bodies of women, old men, children and babies. Among them the wifeof Decimos brother and her little son.

Apparently the Germans, a couple of days before, had driven them away from their homes and

massacred them there for no other reason than they had refused to leave the hamlet.

Four German soldiers had crossed the bridge from their lines on the north bank to the hamlet.The Germans strolled casually, as if on an outing or delivering the post, but then entered eachand every of fifteen houses lined-up in a row along the river. Some of the inhabitants weremurdered on the spot, others were driven out and then forced into the barn. They threw grenadesand shot at 56 civilians, and then equally casually strolled over the bridge and back to their lines.They were never identified and no one even knows if they were SS or Wermacht. The followingday the hamlet was liberated by the Allies.

Howard Reid, the British writer author of Dads War, and myself interviewed Decimo Triossi a

few months ago as part of our research for the forthcoming book Saving Ravenna, about theliberation of Ravenna during WWII.

Decimo is an eyewitness, one of the few left who can tell how the massacre of MadonnadellAlbero was discovered when the vil lage was liberated. One after another, the great majority

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of these first-hand witnesses are dwindling little by little as they are getting very old. A wholegeneration of people who, not only in Italy but in the whole world, have lived the experience ofWWII is on the verge of disappearing.

This demands that the role these witnesses have played in the field of historical studies shouldbe investigated, and that an impending question should be answered: what shall we lose whenthe last witness dies?

Decimos testimony might be questioned since he was not there when the massacre happened.How can we rate his reliabil ity and, more in general, what is the relevance of the subjectivenarration of first-hand witnesses for historians and their accounts of historical events?

I will approach this question by considering the debate, in the beginning of 20th century, aboutthe way memory works and its reliability. Psychologists were the first to tackle this matter,suggesting that the individual's understanding of the world is influenced by elaborate neuralnetworks that organize abstract information and concepts (Frederic Charles Bartlett, 1932). Later,Jean Piaget (1896-1980) proposed a theory about reconstructive memory investigating thecognitive process we employ to internalize information. He maintained that, far from beingobjective, this process works through schematic networks to integrate new information into

memory, adjusting it through various steps of accommodation, as he defines it.

These theories became very influential, and the topic of eyewitness testimony appeared ascommonly recurring in the discussion of reconstructive memory. The accuracy of eyewitnesstestimony is the subject of many studies, in particular about its use in court as a reliable source ofinformation. In 1974 Elizabeth Loftus provided extensive research that challenged the credibilityof eyewitness testimony in this context.

Historians approached this matter in a different way. Rather than denying its reliabil ity, they triedto find guidelines (such as the checklist provided by Robert Jones Shafer in 1974) for evaluatingthe accuracy of each testimony to be included among primary sources when investigating events

within the framework of the historical method approach.

Only a minority of historians, the so-called negationists, kept denying the importance ofeyewitness testimony among other sources - in their attempt to advance a given interpretativehistorical view, typically involving war crimes or crimes against humanity, by means ofillegitimate historical revisionism.

Even though the great majority of historians were aware of the contribution that first-handwitnesses could make to historical studies, they seemed nevertheless reluctant to use thesetestimonies extensively because the problem of reliability of individual memories made themquestionable, and so oral history remained in the background for a long time.

It was not until the end of 20th century, in fact, that the role of oral history became influential,when it established itself as an international movement in historical research and became arespected discipline in many colleges and universities.

At that time the Italian historian Alessandro Portelli (1942-) and his associates began to studythe role that memory itself, whether accurate or faulty, plays in the themes and structures of oralhistory. Their published work has since become standard material in the field, and the role ofwitnesses has been enhanced to the point that many oral historians now include in their researchthe study of the subjective memory of the persons they interview.

Portellis writing has shifted the focus of oral history from whether the subjects account ishistorically accurate to the meaning of the story and the nature of memory. Mary Marshall Clark ofColumbia University summarizes its significance: "Portellis work has transformed oral historyfrom being a kind of stepchild of history into a literary genre in its own right. He has allowed us tosee oral histories as more than eyewitness accounts that are either true or false, and to look for

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themes and structures of the stories."

What Howard Reid and myself piercingly experienced during our interviews in Ravennaconfirmed that through oral history one can get at the meaning and the subjectivity as well as thefacts of what actually happened" (Portelli, 1999), and reiterated the importance of collecting thesetestimonies and making them known to the wide public. As Paolo Pezzino, one of the authors ofa study about the massacre of Monte Sole (not very far from Madonna dellAlbero, where 1,830civilians were killed), has written: Each of these memories has roots, has motives, has reasons

which have to be listened to and studied. The reasons are not to be shared because the historianhas to remain detached. But they have to be listened to and, moreover, they have to be brought tolight. (Luca Baldissara, Paolo Pezzino, Il massacro. Guerra ai civili a Monte Sole, Bologna, IlMulino, 2009).

When Decimo finished narrating the dramatic history of the massacre of Madonna dellAlbero tous, he remained silent for a while, as if stuck on the scene he could not blot out of his memory.Then he let us share in his present bewilderment at the resigned emotional response that cameto him at the time when he was standing in the barn where 56 civilians had been murdered for noreason.

He could see, later but not then, how the experience of the war had worked on his emotional self,to what extent his feelings had been manipulated, distorted and eventually almost silenced,because the massacre had seemed to be, to some extent, part of the scenery, part of theinevitable consequences, casualties, collateral damages of the war.

Decimo said: We saw with different eyes, then.

It is this sight, the sight of the massacre as well as his insight into what he had felt at the time,that makes Decimo a reliable witness to a tragic piece of history.

Individual memories resonate with emotions: it is the emotion within the experience which

matters as much as the experience itself, since it preserves its truth and reliability through time.

When the last witness dies, this emotion will be lost on the next generation if all we hand down tothem is history handbooks.

When the last witness dies, there must be videos and recordings that continue narrate thesehistories, and there must be school projects that teach history through documents which canspeak forcibly in favour of the pledge for peace.

When the last witness dies, we will have to find ways of handing down this heritage and ofmaking sure that the message from those who suffered the sorrows and horrors of the war can

still be heard, loud and clear.