THE FOSSE ARDEATINE MASSACRE

THE FOSSE ARDEATINE MASSACRE

Two Italian widows place flowers in the Ardentine caves at Grotto Via Ardeatina following the Fosse Ardeatine massacre. The Fosse Ardeatine massacre was a mass killing carried out in Rome on 24 March 1944 by German occupation troops as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted the previous day in central Rome against the SS Police Regiment “Bozen”; security and police formation of the German SS. A total of 335 Italians were transported to the Ardeatine caves in truckloads and then, in groups of five, put to death inside the caves. Many were forced to kneel down over the bodies of those who had been killed before them because the cave had become filled with dead bodies.

During the killings, the existence of the five extra prisoners was discovered, and it was decided to kill them anyway, in order to prevent news of the location of the place of execution from becoming known.

The bodies of the victims were placed in piles, typically about a meter in height, and then buried under tons of rock debris when German military engineers set explosives to seal the caves and hide the atrocity.

The victims came from an array of backgrounds; rich, and poor, doctors and lawyers, workers and shopkeepers, artists and artisans, teachers and students, men and teenaged boys from every walk of life, and even a Catholic priest. Most had nothing to do with the partisan attack on SS Police Regiment “Bozen” the day previously; the main concern of the SS had been speedy fulfillment of the quota for reprisals. The youngest victim was aged 15. 75 of the victims were Jews, while 260 were Catholics. Members of the Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag), a dissident communist Resistance group, constituted the largest group, but also included members of the Monarchist Clandestine Military Front of the Resistance and those with suspected ties to the Italian Resistance Patriotic Action Groups. Rome, Lazio, Italy. July 1944. Image taken by Carl Mydans.