STAZEMA. Another one has died survivor of the Sant’Anna massacre: Ada Battistini. She was 92 years old. She survived the massacre thanks to the only glimmer of humanity that emerged from the crazy ferocity of the SS. The German soldier that he was supposed to kill her and a group of children instead of pointing the machine gun at them he shot in the air and then at some sheep, then signaling them to run away. Thus Ada was saved, who in her massacre lost her father, killed during the descent towards Valdicastello, and many other of her family.
Ada was thirteen years old when she lived the experience that marked her entire existence. He recalled the facts of that tragic 12 August 1944 in which 560 people including women, children and elderly people lost their lives, in the trial at the military court of La Spezia which saw ten SS hierarchs recognized as responsible for the massacre convicted .
After the massacre she continued to live in Sant’Anna, in the Coletti area, until in 1958 she moved to Strettoia where she remained for her entire life with her husband Cesare Cinquini. She leaves behind two children, Franco and Maria Pia.
«He was a very good person – recalls his son-in-law Vittorio Tommasi – who dedicated his entire existence to his family and to Sant’Anna di Stazzema, because when he could and in the summer he was always in his home in Coletti. In fact, Ada had also taken care of her brother, looking after him for a long time.”
She had been suffering for a long time from an illness that had not spared her further suffering until last Saturday, when she passed away.
This is how Ada remembered the massacre she had witnessed in the book Oliviero Toscani “Sant’Anna di Stazzema. 12 August 1944. The children remember”. «That day I remember that, after a couple of squads of soldiers passed by, five of them came to my house. Dad didn’t want to leave. There were several evacuees from Pietrasanta down there, there were about fifty of us among us. These soldiers positioned themselves, one in each corner of the house and one entered, searched the house at the bottom and then set it on fire. Then they told us to go to Valdicastello. When we left, we heard machine gun fire from the houses below: 23-24 were killed, there were some wounded, including the little girl Anna Pardini, who was in her mother’s arms, just a few days old. After, I don’t know how long, a kilometer or a kilometer and a half, they made us stop and put us all in a pile with a young man, very young, blond, who never spoke, leaning in front of us with the machine gun. And when all the soldiers had passed, he waved to us with his hand, as if to say to stay calm. He never spoke. And instead of shooting at us, towards us, he turned around and shot up into the mountain. There were four or five sheep and he killed them. And he stayed there. After a while one of my cousins passed by, sister of Lilia, of Syria, of Adele. And she said “O aunt! they shot my mother, she has the baby in her arms, come away”. And my mother told her “I can do it Cesira”. She was all covered in blood. She had a bullet in her arm. Most were dead. They had killed my little cousins, Orietta Pardini, Sara and her mother, Gelsomina. And then there were many. There were three pregnant women, because the houses were full of displaced people. At my house, there were fifty of us between the house and the huts. Afterwards, this boy left. He waved at us like this: “go away”.
The funeral mass will be celebrated on Monday 17 June at 3pm in the Strettoia church. The deepest condolences of the municipal administration of Stazzema and the Martyrs Association of Sant’Anna di Stazzema go to the family. L
