How Is It Remembered?

The central experience of a visit to Monte Sole Peace School is a tour of the Historical Park of Monte Sole. Educator guides begin by walking visitors up a small hill to a vista point, where they ask visitors to carefully observe the rolling green hills and forested landscape around them, and consider what they think the place looked like 70 years ago. The educators then explain that houses once covered the hills, with close to 1,000 people living there, but that the entire village was destroyed in a massacre led by Nazi troops in the fall of 1944.

The tour proceeds to three different ruin sites, where scant remains of a few different massacre sites can be seen: a collection of private homes and shops; a church; and a cemetery. The educator explains how the massacres took place in each place: what strategies villagers used to try to survive; what strategies soldiers used to trap them; how villagers were ultimately killed; and how any survivors escaped. The narration includes an oral testimony delivered by a survivor him/herself, and two others that are read aloud by the educator.

Educators also show a map of the area illustrating the path Nazi and Italian Fascist forces took, and the specific places (e.g., churches, schools, etc.) where massacres took place. Using the map and the landscape, educators explain how Monte Sole, positioned between two rivers and near a railroad line, made it extremely important for communications. They explain that German troops were ordered to “clean up” the area completely to ensure there would be no partisan resistance, and to allow their troops unfettered access across the mountains. Apart from the geographic importance of the site, the educators stress that the massacre was part of a campaign of terror used by the Nazis at the end of the war to suppress any civilian resistance.

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How Is It Remembered?

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