Horn Prisoners of Jan Smuts

Italian Prisoners of War in South Africa in WWII
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-77619-285-4
Verlag: Jonathan Ball
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten

Equally skilled in a variety of trades other than in the art of love, the Italian prisoners of war (POWs) who were incarcerated in South Africa during the Second World War are a source of great fascination to this day. Who were these men? And what made some of them attempt dramatic escapes, while others wanted to stay behind after the war? The first Italian POWs arrived in the Union of South Africa in early 1941, most of them being held in Zonderwater Camp outside Cullinan or in work camps across the country. The government of Jan Smuts saw them as a source of cheap labour that would contribute to harvesting schemes, road-building projects such as the old Du Toit's Kloof Pass between Paarl and Worcester and even to prickly-pear eradication schemes. Prisoners of Jan Smuts recounts the stories of survival and shenanigans of the Italian POWs in the Union through the eyes of five prisoners who had documented their experiences in memoirs and letters. While many POWs seemed to appreciate the opportunities to gain new skills, others clung to the Fascist ideas they had grown up with and refused to work . Many opted to remain in South Africa once the war had ended, forging quite a legacy. These included sculptor Edoardo Villa, who left an important mark in the local and international art world, and businessman Aurelio Gatti, who built an ice-cream empire whose gelato was to delight generations of South Africans.

KAREN HORN is a historian and an author. Her first book, In Enemy Hands: South Africa's POWs in WWII, was nominated for the Alan Paton Sunday Times non-fiction award in 2016. Horn is a research fellow at the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State. In her work, she investigates individuals' experiences on the home front and the battlefront, looking for humanity in the fog of war. In her spare time, she observes her husband's gastronomic skills and has long conversations with her two collies. She lives in Somerset

Autoren/Hrsg.

Horn, Karen

Leseproben

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I care not where my body may take me as long as my soul is embarked on a meaningful journey. – Dante Alighieri

MY FIRST BOOK, In Enemy Hands: South African POWs in WWII (2015), was based on research about South African soldiers who were captured in North Africa during the war and their experiences as prisoners of war (POWs). These men were held captive in Italy, and later in German-occupied territories, and they returned home in 1945 only after the Allies defeated the German forces in April of that year.

Decades after the war, these veterans welcomed me into their homes and shared their stories. As captives, they sat on the sidelines as their friends fought on in the war, yet their isolation from the battlefront did not diminish their suffering. Upon reflection, I realised that it is not the hardship these men endured that fascinated me but their ability to live, hope, love and laugh during times of suffering – and even to turn out better men at the end of it.

As the Second World War spread across the globe between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of thousands of Italian conscripts were captured in East and North Africa. The Allies, especially Britain, decided that many of them should spend the war in POW camps in British Dominions, including South Africa. Prime Minister Jan Smuts agreed, and as a consequence between 60000 and 100 000 Italian POWs were sent to the Union of South Africa.1

So, while homesick South African POWs whiled away their time in camps across Europe, Italian POWs did the same in the Zonderwater Prisoner-of-War Camp near Pretoria. It was, therefore, to Zonderwater that my focus then shifted.

A POW is someone who is captured and incarcerated by enemy forces during battle. Once a soldier raises a white flag to surrender, the rules of battle no longer apply. The Geneva Convention regulated the treatment of war prisoners to some extent, yet POWs remained largely at the mercy of their captors. Mental and physical survival depended on each man’s ability to develop new skills and to adapt to life in a POW camp. Their responses were diverse: many of them struggled with this process, but others thrived. Camp commanders and guards responded with a range of emotions, ranging from mild irritation to intense exasperation, depending on the POWs’ level of ingenuity in making their experience more bearable.

Colourful anecdotes about the Italian POWs persisted during the decades that followed the war and stories abound of their creativity, their technical skills – especially in construction projects – and also their convivial and romantic outlook on life. While there is truth to many of these stories, others are marked by exaggeration. The POWs’ presence also left tangible marks, such as the roads, mountain passes and churches they built, the crops they helped to harvest, the forests they helped to maintain and the enterprises they later embarked upon. Many South Africans remain fascinated by these foreign visitors and hold them in high regard. There is no doubt that they made a valuable contribution to South Africa during the war, but at what cost to themselves both emotionally and socially? Some even stayed in South Africa to forge careers and left indelible imprints here: if you have ever wondered where the Italian-styled Gatti’s ice cream derived its name, or attended any of the erstwhile Cape Performing Arts Board (CAPAB) operas in Cape Town directed by maestro Gregorio Fiasconaro, you would have been experiencing the fruits of their ingenuity and labours.

To try to write about the experiences of tens of thousands of prisoners of war would force one to generalise and to overlook the nuances and complexities of individual experiences. There is also the danger of ‘mythologising’ the Italian POW episode. I believe that a focus on individual stories will make the experiences of POWs more real and relatable to a modern audience and that is why I have decided to focus on five main characters.

My long research journey began in 2016, though by that time war veterans’ memories were fading and many had passed away. Most of the Italian POWs who spent time in South Africa returned to Italy after the war and my research funding did not allow me to undertake the long journey to interview them there.

At a certain point, though, I heard about Paolo Ricci. A former captive in the Zonderwater camp, he decided to remain in South Africa when the war came to an end. Born in 1920, Paolo was already 97 when I interviewed him in Pretoria in 2017.

I also visited Emilio Coccia at the Zonderwater Museum, where he is the chairman of the Zonderwater ex-POW Society and, through him, I came to hear about the memoirs that were available on the Zonderwater website. The life-changing events of the war and of captivity motivated many former POWs to document what they remembered. I was fortunate to happen upon these memoirs, even if they were all in Italian, a language I had no knowledge of at that time. Through the Società Dante Alighieri (Dante Alighieri Society), an organisation that promotes the Italian language and culture around the world, I was introduced to Tiarè Totaro. A professional translator, she patiently and accurately translated numerous, often long-winded texts into English, conveying the meaning and context. This process was essential to the book – without Tiarè, this indispensable resource would not have been accessible to me.

The memoirs of Raffaello Cei were one of those that had been translated by Tiarè. Raffaello had written down his story because, in his words, he wanted the youth to know the importance of peace. By a happy coincidence, I discovered that Raffaello was at that time still alive and well and living in Italy. We became Facebook friends and he shared many of his POW experiences directly with me via email. His assistance and kindness in helping me with my writing were invaluable and I shall never forget him.

Another memoir that I asked Tiarè to translate was Pietro Scottu’s recollections of the war and his time in South Africa. He was an adventurous man who had no regard for barbed-wire fences. Pietro and I exchanged several emails and in one he wrote that he looked forward to seeing this book in print. Living in Genoa, he wrote that he missed the beaches of the Eastern Cape and considered his time in South Africa to have been the ‘longest holiday of my life’.2

Luigi Pederzoli was not a soldier but an administrator in an Italian colony on the African continent. Upon his capture, he became known as POW 18962. His daughter, Emily Spenser (also known as Emilia Pederzoli), became a friend of mine, albeit from afar, and I am enormously grateful to her for her willingness to share Luigi’s experiences.

Then there is Giovanni Palermo, a man of conviction who never surrendered his beliefs in his leaders, causing him to endure harsher conditions in captivity. His son was gracious in letting me use Giovanni’s war memoirs.

These five men – Paolo, Raffaello, Pietro, Luigi and Giovanni – are the main characters in this book about the Italian POWs in South Africa. It is through their eyes that we gain an understanding of what it was like to be a prisoner at Zonderwater and Pietermaritzburg or in a remote work camp – or what it meant to be on the run from the authorities. Each of these five men had a unique and distinct experience in South Africa. Their stories cover different aspects of the Italian prisoner-of-war experience in the Union; and while they can never be completely representative, their accounts offer greater insights into the realities of being a captive in a foreign land.

Memories fade and when working with memoirs it quickly becomes clear that there is no such thing as historical accuracy, regardless of how hard one tries to verify information. Many of the experiences that were written about in the prisoners’ memoirs can be verified, to some extent, by archival documents, but not all. In such instances, I analysed, interpreted and imagined as accurately as I could. That said, I wrote from the perspective of a South African historian, fully aware that objectivity is an elusive goal.

If, on the pages of this book, the reader does not always find the same happy story they have come to know about the Italian POWs in South Africa, I ask that they bear in mind that I stayed true to the evidence I found in archival documents. After all, it is also the historian’s responsibility to confront the myths of the past.

I am immensely grateful to the veterans and their families for allowing me to tell their stories. Emilio Coccia’s willingness to share information and his many years of devoted work at the Zonderwater Museum have provided me with a crucial link to the past. The museum is situated where the Zonderwater POW camp used to be. Today, verdant grass and tall trees bring a sense of calm to the cemetery where some of those POWs were laid to rest.

At the South African National Museum of Military History (NMMH), Phindile Madida searched for and scanned hundreds of photographs for this book. Her professional approach and her friendly emails brightened my writing days. In Italy, Elisa Longorato of the Zonderwater Block ex-POW Association and daughter of a former POW sourced many photos for me and these add immense value and interest to this book. Emilia Pederzoli, the daughter of Luigi, also provided many photographs. I am endlessly thankful to all of them for sharing these priceless mementoes of that period. More photographs...