Stazzema (Lucca), 16 June 2024 – She died yesterday, 15 June, at the age of 92 Ada Battistini, survivor of the massacre of Sant’Anna di Stazzema and witness in the La Spezia trial in which ten SS hierarchs were sentenced to life imprisonment. On 12 August 1944, when the Nazi-fascists killed 560 women, elderly people and children in the village of Stazzema, she was thirteen years old. She was spared, along with others, by a young German soldier who decided to shoot elsewhere, at some sheep. From that day on, however, nothing was the same for her. She lost her father, killed during the descent towards Valdicastello, and many other family members.
Ada Battistini lived in Sant’Anna, in the locality Coletti. After the massacre she continued to live there until in 1958 she went to live in Strettoia, a hamlet of Pietrasanta, 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 – remembers his son-in-law Vittorio Tommasi – who dedicated his whole life to his family and to Sant’Anna di Stazzema, because when he could in the summer he was always at his home in Coletti. Ada had in fact also taken care of his brother , looking after him for a long time.”
She had been living with an illness for some time that did not spare her further suffering. Her funeral will be celebrated tomorrow (Monday 17 June) at 3pm in the Strettoia church. Messages of condolence and closeness to her family arrive from the municipal administration of Stazzema and from the Martyrs Association of Sant’Anna di Stazzema.
The governor also dedicated a memory to her Eugenio Giani who wrote on social media: “Today Tuscany mourns the passing of Ada Battistini, extraordinary witness to the Sant’Anna di Stazzema massacre. Ada, with her stories and her memory, has kept alive the memory of one of the darkest moments of our history. At 13 he survived Nazi-fascist barbarity, then dedicating his life to his family and community. May his example of strength and resilience remain forever in our hearts.” .
