The Wilmington morning star. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1909-1990, 1944-08-20
Mass Murder OF Many
Italians By Germans De-
scribed In Letter

Ina, the large cavern on the out
skirts of Rome where the Germans {
committed mass murder of Ro- ,
nan hostages, is contained in ,
etter from Lieut.. Scott Cooper, !
ormerly of Camp Davis, to h is
friends F. H. Fechtig and Miss Al
lie Morris Fectig of 1910 Princess
street.
It is said that on the night Of
March % the Germans lined up
some 500 hostages before the Grot-
%, which is located not far from
the famous catacombs of San Sc
bastiano. At 2 o'clock in the NOR
ming, the Germans herded their
prisoners in patches of four n d
moved them down with machine
guns, then shoveled the bodies
deep in the cave and sealed the
entrance.
When Rome fell, and the victori-
Gus Allied armies moved in, Ital-
ians rushed to reopen the awful
abbatoir to find horrible evidences
of the barbara conduct of the enc
my. The custom of killing hostages
is one abandoned long ago by civil
lized nations.
Lieut.. Cooper S letter follows:
Have you seen the July Bird is
sue of Life Magazine? If not, be
sure to get it. 1t shows some pic
lures of the place where the Ger
mans killed all those Italians. I
was out there the other day, so
will try to tell you all about it. At
the present time they have high
wall built all around the place with
an Italian guard at the gate who
is supposed to keep a l unauthor-
lied persons out. We bribed him
with a cigarette, so he opened up.
just inside the gate were some
people dressed in black. They were
in mourning, because they had a
son or brother in the cave some
where. We went on to the mouth
of the cave where we spoke with
another Italian guard. He agreed
to show us around the place. Just
inside the mouth were lots of pic
lures, flowers, statues, ETC., which
the people had brought to pay
their respect to the dead. We fol-
lowed the tunnel on around and
the further we went the more mis-
cradle things looked and smeled.
They had automobiles parked in
the place, which were put there
before the Germans discovered the
place. They thought the Germans
could not find it, therefore could
not requisition their cars. They
fooled them, and not only took
their cars but made this particular
cave a spot which will go down in
the history. We followed the cave
On around. Finally we ran up en-
two persons on a stretcher. You
could hardly recognize them as be-
ing human, because they were a.
most decomposed. Then we round
ed the bend and actually saw all
of it. have seen lots of sights,
but l think that was top ranking.
The bodies were piled one on the
top of another with dirt over them.
The Germans shot them and then
carried them back there and piled
them up and then blew up the
cave to cover them, but they did
not do such good job of that
because only half of them were
covered. Don't see how the fam
lilies could possibly identify them
by appearance. Coming out we
heard someone yelling at the gate,
so we went out to see. There was
an old woman who had completely
lost her mind and trying to fight
her way in to see her son. The
guard says she comes two or three
times each day and tries to get
in. 1t would be much worse on
her if she saw her son in the con-
dition he was in. That act got me
worse than seeing all of the bodies.
That makes the third place that
I have been and each one seems
to be just little worse than the
other. Oh yea, they took a priest
out to say the last words before
they we're shot, so after all of
them were dead they shot t h e
priest and took him back there
too. That was nothing less than
wholesale murder. The person re-
sponsible should be burned in He'll
Fire, and probably will be. Guess
some German general wanted to
make a name for himself. The bad
part of it was they picked an Ital-
ian citizen here in town to 60
through the files and pick out the
names of the persons who were to
be killed. You can imagine his feel
ings.
1.-THE pictures in the cave show
ed that most of the fellows were
very young-from II to Is, with
their whole life before them. That
surely was bad. Don't think shall |
ever forget the feeling I had when
I went in to the place" !
CTnTnNnANr