Thank you for listening to We Have Ways of Making You Talk. Sign up to our Patreon to receive bonus content, live streams and our weekly newsletter with money off books and museum visits as well. Plus early access to all live show tickets. That's patreon.com slash we have ways.

This episode of We Have Ways contains content that some might find distressing.

Everybody was shouting, all crying desperately, and I couldn't cry. I just tried to save myself.

It's different what you feel when you're there, different than just listening to the story,

but entering the cemetery, we were more or less 200 and everybody was pushing. But I wanted to end up in the center to protect myself in the middle of the

crowd. Everyone was pushing forwards and backwards. It was like a waving mass. And in that way,

instead of being in the center, I ended up on the extreme left, close to one of the walls. Well, these were my

thoughts, that I should jump or hide myself or stay in the mass. I only wanted to be safe until

the very last moment, but there was absolutely no way out. Well, because I was on the right hand

side, I was pushing to go to the centre, and meanwhile the soldier was now inside the cemetery setting up his machine gun. He placed it on the left in the corner, and he loaded it with a belt of bullets, right in front of us. One lady tried to escape, because she realized what was going on. She was shouting, I want to go to my daughter, I want to go to my daughter, and they shot her. And I was still at the edge, and the soldier was loading the machine gun. And suddenly, like a jolt, there was an explosion so intense, and the blast threw me into the air, so that I arrived in the middle of the crowd with my head down and my legs up in the air. It had been a grenade. One of them had thrown a grenade. And so I was then in the middle of the mass of people,

but on the ground. I was conscious, but I was able to shout. Nothing. Then everybody started

shouting. Everyone calling out, crying, who was hurt, crying in despair. Help me. I could hear the

voices. Everybody calling, shouting, and then the machine gun started. Well, that was the testimony of Cornelia Paselli about the events at Casalia below Montessoli

on the 29th of September, 1944.

Well, welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk, the second part of our short series about

death at the mountains, the events at Montesolo in September of

1944. And Jim, in the previous episode, we laid out the origins of the partisan group, the

Stella Rosser. We talked about their lack of political affiliation, their great success, their leader,

Lupo, but also with that comes the German decline in tolerance for such activity, essentially.

And at the end of the last episode, we pointed out that the SS were now turning their attention

to dealing with the Stella Rosa.

And that account, I think, points us in the direction of the tragic events that are to follow.

...