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Excerpt from Franca's Story, involving St. Anna Chapter 21: Life at the Palace (Vita alle Pianore)

        The brutality of the war crept closer. In Santa Anna, about 5 kilometers from Pianore, the Germans sought revenge. The Italian partisans hid in the little hill towns, slipping in and out silently, invisibly, to cause havoc with German operations. They slashed tires, cut phone lines, and destroyed food supplies.
        In retaliation for the death of two Nazi officers at the hands of the partisans, the German soldiers gathered 560 people from surrounding villages, set fire to their homes and killed their animals. They took them to the piazza at the Church of St. Anna. The soldiers, armed with machine guns, surrounded the villagers. They stabbed the babies with bayonets. They raped the young women. Then the soldiers emptied their rounds and shot anyone left standing. They piled the bodies behind the church. They doused the corpses with gasoline and set them on fire. It burned for days.
        The putrid odor of burning flesh found its way to the Palace at Pianore, along with the rumor of the annihilation of Santa Anna.
        Franca was horrified to think it might be true. How can the German soldiers do these things? Do they realize what they are doing to us when they bomb and kill people for doing nothing but trying to survive? They are like us, they have families, too. How can they sleep at night?

[On a personal note, the family of our photographer of the Palace at Pianore, Dominic Bonnuccelli, lost 17 of their family in this horrible event.]