On 8 September 1943 Italy signed the Armistice with the Allies, subsequently the Germans occupied its territories and Abruzzo became the theatre of war, split in two parts by the Gustav Line. The towns along the Gustav Line from Ortona on the Adriatic Coast to Gagliano river on the Tyrrhenian coast, like Gessopalena, were cleared out and their inhabitants were vexed, abused, murdered and killed by the occupants, and finally on December 1943 the towns were wiped out to prevent the Allies to move northern from the South. People were so desperate and intolerant to the occupation that started grouping in partisan gangs to oppose the Germans, and that’s how the resistance against nazifascism developed around Maiella.

On the forefront of the Resistance there was the “Brigata Maiella” founded by Ettore Troilo on 5 December 1943 in Casoli, with Domenico Troilo form Gessopalena as vice-commander and military head. After many negotiations, Ettore Troilo succeeded in having Brigata Maiella join the English Eighth Army and then the Polish Command, fighting even after the liberation of Abruzzo, in Marche, Emilia Romagna, Veneto and until 25 April 1945, the Italian Liberation Day.

The “Gold Medal for Military Value” was awarded because “for 15 months of very harsh fight against the German invader sustained only by an immense love for their Native Land, the Patriots of Maiella have always faced overpowering enemy forces, and have written a page of superb heroism in the history of reborn Italy”.

The massacre of Sant’Agata was one of the cruellest, when in the night of 21 January 1944 in the hamlet Sant’Agata the Germans shot and bombed 41 people who had been cleared out from Torricella Peligna, and then, to hide that horrible crime, they burned the bodies. Only two kids miraculously survived: Nicoletta and her brother Antonio Di Luzio, the only witnesses of an unpunished crime.

[Credits | Text: Ottavio Di Renzo De Laurentis | Translation: Mirella Rapa | Voice and music: Studio Qreate | Photo: Camillo Talone]