The Secret of Altamura: Nazi Crimes, Italian Treasure

by Dick Rosano

  As the sun set and the temperature dropped, Martin drove south along the highway through towns and hamlets: San Benedetto, Montesilvano, and Pescara. Just south of Termoli, the highway veered away from the sea and turned inland. He passed San Severo, Foggia, and Cerignola, where he left the A14 and took a minor road to Altamura.

  He spent some time finding the Hotel San Nicola, an 18th century hotel that had been modernized, and parked his car. Located at Via Luca de Samuele Cagnazzi 29, this hotel had a restaurant – which in Italy meant they also served wine and cocktails in the lobby – making Martin glad that he had chosen this establishment. A quickly downed glass of chilled white wine followed by a more calmly sipped red wine helped to clear the road dust from his throat and, once in his room, lull him into a deep sleep.

  The morning sun shone through the thin curtains and woke Martin up earlier than he had wanted. Through squinting eyes, he looked at the room, turned over, and considered going back to sleep. But the journal was on the nightstand and spoke to him.

  “Im erdreich…wie der Sassi.”

  Before retiring the night before, Martin had done a little more research on the Sassi on his mobile phone. It referred to the caves but the term was sometimes also used to refer to the people who inhabited them. The grottoes were carved into the hillside and, therefore, could be considered “in the ground…like the Sassi” and Martin understood his grandfather's notes to suggest that the riches he sought were probably in those caves.

  Once distracted by so many thoughts Martin couldn't return to sleep so he rose grudgingly from the bed and showered, preparing for a new day.

  Once down in the hotel lobby, Martin waited while a pair of elderly American ladies questioned the desk clerk.

  “We heard that the true Saint Nicholas is from this area. Is that right?” one asked.

  The clerk was familiar with the story and knew that the people of Puglia and Basilicata claimed the saint of Christmas lore as their own. He also knew that San Nicola was a 4th century Greek bishop who had died in Greece but whose bones had been brought to Bari and interred there. The relic brought Christian pilgrims and launched the centuries-long legend of the saint as the Santa Claus of gift-giving.

  The hotel clerk knew the facts but, more importantly, also knew the value of San Nicola and the tourist dollars that the legend brought to Bari and the region of Puglia, which at times shared its notoriety with bordering Basilicata region. The hotel was in fact named after the saint and these money-wielding Americans should be reassured that they were patronizing the region where the true Santa Claus once lived. “Well,” the clerk thought silently, “at least he is buried here.”

  “Sì, ladies,” he said with confidence. “Santa Claus is from here.” One of the women asked where was he buried, but her companion quickly jumped in.

  “You can't bury Santa Claus, Karen.”

  “Well, it's not like he was Jesus Christ!” the other one replied. They wandered off deep in debate about where Santa Claus could be found, having forgotten that the original question was put to the clerk at the desk.

  When it was his turn, Martin approached the desk and smiled at the clerk.

  “I understand that San Nicola's bones are actually in Venice,” Martin said.

  The clerk frowned and, with a shrug of the shoulders, admitted that this was one of the theories thrown around by those who fought over the saint's celebrity.

  “Beh,” he muttered. “Many cities claim the holy saint as their own, but the bones in Venice are not his.”

  Martin didn't want to dispute this or enter into a debate with the man. He knew from his research – and his grandfather's journal – that the bones in Venice are believed to represent some of San Nicola's remains, although he also knew that most of the holy man's bones were interred here in this region, as the proud locals claimed.

  “I am a German museum collector and I have been sent to find lost Italian art, materials that may have been removed during the war.”

  The clerk's sideways glance put Martin on alert, so he tried to clarify.

  “My hope is that some of the artwork that was removed during the Second World War could be found, and perhaps returned to the churches and homes that had lost them.”

  The people in Altamura and the greater region of Basilicata knew all too well about the Italian wealth that was taken by the Germans. “Removed during the war” was a phrase that hardly described the crimes committed by the Nazis. To the hotel clerk, his German visitor was a modern-day version of the Nazi thieves who plundered his country seventy years ago.

  The clerk looked down at the register, laid his index finger upon a certain entry, then turned toward Martin.

  “You are in room 102, sì?”

  “Yes.”

  “Signor Bernhard, giusto?”

  “Yes.”

  The clerk studied Martin's face for several seconds, then resumed with tightened lips.

  “Are you any relation to the German general, Anselm Bernhard?”

  “Actually, he was a colonel,” Martin said, quickly realizing his mistake. By correcting the facts about his grandfather's identity, he had fallen into the clerk's trap, and inadvertently revealed his connection to Bernhard.

  “Colonel Bernhard,” the clerk responded slowly, emphasizing the man's rank, “is well known in Altamura. And you say you are an art collector?”

  “Yes, but you see, I am not my grandfather.” Martin could already tell that backpedaling at this point in the conversation was a strategic error. Looking down at his hands gripping the railing of the desk, he continued.

  “Like many of the Nazis at the time, my grandfather committed crimes against the Italian people. I cannot justify his actions, and my apologies would no doubt seem inadequate. I have spent many months traveling throughout Italy searching for and returning the artworks my grandfather stole. I am here, in Altamura, to continue that mission.”

  He looked at the clerk, who seemed unmoved by this quasi-confession.

  “It is my hope that I can restore most, if not all, the stolen works to their rightful owners. Anselm Bernhard will burn in hell, but I hope to re-establish the good name of Germany by undoing some of his sins.”

  Martin had planned to ask the clerk for directions to the Sassi, but this conversation left him feeling quite unnerved, and he decided that pursuing the plan would be pointless. So he retired to the breakfast room where he ate his prima colazione alone.

  Chapter 17

  Benvenuto

  When he arrived in Altamura the night before, Carlo had wandered a bit searching for the Filomena household then came upon it suddenly. It was just turning to dusk when he arrived, and the lights in the house were ablaze in anticipation of his arrival.

  The family friend in St. Louis had written to Elena and Cristiano Filomena twice already, priming them for Carlo's expected visit. So when he stepped through the doorway, Carlo didn't feel like he was confronting strangers. Handshakes quickly turned into hugs, and rapid-fire questions in colloquial Italian had Carlo's head spinning. Their daughter, Giovanna, emerged from another room soon enough to rescue the guest from this onslaught of questions.

  The broad table in the middle of the main room quickly filled up with fragrant plates of roasted meat and bowls of grilled vegetables. Pasta soon emerged from the kitchen, and Carlo wondered how something so dependent on timing could be produced just moments after his arrival.

  Cristiano proudly set two bottles of wine on the table. They were label-less and looked the same to Carlo, so he wondered why two bottles were served at the same time. Gia anticipated Carlo's confusion and whispered in standard Italian, “Papa knows that one bottle would never be enough for four of us, so he's just saving a trip to the cellar.” At that she grinned and patted Carlo on the arm, as if to reassure him in his entry into true Italian life.

  Conversation never dragged that night, and Carlo did his best to keep up, but the dialect didn't always translate easily into his standard Italian. This is
where Gia's formal education came in handy. More than a few times, she repeated what her parents were saying in standard Italian instead of dialect, so that Carlo could catch on.

  After a long trip, a few hours of driving, and a sumptuous meal, Carlo slept soundly that night. He woke to bright sunshine that streamed in through a window whose drapes had been pulled apart with a dramatic sweep of Zia Filomena's arms.

  “Buon giorno!” she said cheerfully. Her salt and pepper hair was pinned carelessly back from the sides of her face, revealing chubby cheeks and dazzling dark green eyes. A smile lit up her face when she saw Carlo squint in the light, but she wasn't about to let him sleep any longer.

  The villagers called Elena Filomena “Zia” out of respect for her and her baking skills, but also as a term of endearment. The roly-poly woman was always in good spirits, always seeming to smell like the fabulous bread she spent most days baking, and always offering a quote from the Bible to remind lesser humans how they were expected to act. She wasn't a book-toting Christian like those “reborn” in America, but she relied on the verses of the Bible to inform and direct her life – and the lives of those under her charge.

  Zia's husband, Cristiano, was much in need of her supervision. Years of hard physical labor in the fields had left him with a slightly stooped posture, but his ruddy complexion and ready smile conveyed a man who had a happy life.

  Despite the invisible weight that seemed to sit upon his shoulders, he was strong and healthy. His strength belied the nearly 60 years he had lived. He was devoted to his wife and daughter, but Zia knew that Cristiano was also in love with the wine that he made from vines grown on the outskirts of their town. With her oversight, which Cristiano lamely complained of from time to time, Zia expected her husband – and their marriage – to last for many more years.

  Gia was their daughter. Her proper name was Giovanna, but everyone took to calling her by the shortened name, except her mother. Zia believed that some degree of formality was a good thing in families and preferred that her daughter go by her given name, not some Americanized shorter version. But Cristiano liked to use the diminutive form of the name for his beloved daughter, and so did Gia's friends.

  “Time to get up. The coffee is getting cold,” Zia announced as she swept out of the room.

  Carlo dressed quickly, stumbled down the hallway to the tiny bathroom on his way to the kitchen downstairs. Since he had arrived about dinner time the night before, he had met the family but had too little time to get to know them. That morning, he hoped to change that.

  The coffee wasn't getting cold. In fact Zia hadn't even made the small pot of espresso. Carlo soon found out that “the coffee is getting cold” was a phrase Zia used to remind people to hurry things up a bit. Prima colazione in the Filomena house was much like that in other Italian homes, fresh rolls and some fruit, accompanied by cups of bracing espresso or foamy cappuccino. While he consumed this he listened to the banter among mother, father, and daughter, his eyes darting from face to face as he tracked their comments.

  There was enough Italian spoken by Carlo's parents and friends in the neighborhood on The Hill in St. Louis that Carlo had developed a familiarity with it. Their Italian was southern, like that spoken in Altamura and in the Filomena household. With dialects so powerful a force in Italy, and the differences in phrasing, vocabulary, and idioms between the regions, Carlo silently thanked his background for teaching him the dialect of the region. But the conversations he was used to on The Hill came at a slower pace, not with the burst of energy he noticed here that made it so hard for Carlo to keep up.

  “É ora,” said Zia. It didn't take long for Carlo to realize this was another of Zia's favorite phrases. “It's time” was the signal for all those around her to get in gear and move on to the business of the day.

  Gia had already risen from the table and was cleaning up the dishes when Cristiano stood up and walked out the door.

  “He always spends the morning in the vineyard,” said Giovanna. “We don't think he's actually working out there, but he likes to spend time with the grapes.”

  “And the wine,” added Zia Filomena with a wink.

  A slight smile crept across Carlo's face. He began to recognize some of the gender-specific stereotypes some Italian families back in St. Louis also evinced. The men didn't regard the women as second class – and the women certainly didn't regard their men as the rulers of the family – but there was a fixed distribution of labor honored by tradition that was apparent to Carlo even here.

  “É ora,” Zia said again. “Time that we begin baking the bread.”

  With that she swung her head to the side, indicating that Carlo should follow her. They stepped out into the sunlight and Zia turned toward an arched stone hemisphere next to the house. It looked like a very small oven, but Carlo knew right away it wasn't.

  In fact, the stone enclave was the opposite of an oven. It was on the shaded side of the house so the stone would remain cool. Zia reached inside the opening and withdrew a clay bowl that was mounded on top and covered with a cloth. She called Carlo's attention to the bowl, then drew back a corner of the cloth to reveal a large ball of dough.

  The stone structure stored the dough to allow it to begin rising. Kept warm but away from searing heat, the yeast and starch acted together to begin a fermentation process similar to that which turns grape juice into wine. The result was a bulging lump of yeasty dough that, when properly kneaded, rounded, and cuffed, would turn into the crusty bread for which Altamura was justly famous, the Pane di Altamura.

  Wagging her finger and smiling, Zia Filomena knew what Carlo's first question would be.

  “No special yeast or chemicals, like they use in the America,” she explained. “Here, in Altamura, the yeast comes from the clay and the building and the ovens we bake our loaves in. It's like a spirit in the air that comes to enrich our bread and feed our families.”

  Cristiano, coming around a corner, quickly added, “and ferment our grapes and slake our thirst.”

  Zia Filomena slapped him on the shoulder and both of them shared a laugh, as Carlo stood watching the faithful and happy couple.

  Chapter 18

  A Morning of Baking Bread

  Zia Filomena reached into the little stone cave again and withdrew another bowl covered with a cloth. The aromas of this bread were more obvious to Carlo, as the scent of garlic and rosemary escaped from the dough she held.

  Zia handed the bowl to Carlo and told him to follow her.

  As they strode down the street, they met women supervising little children at play, some others dusting the window frames and balconies of their houses, and some of the neighborhood mothers who were carrying risen dough for their own bread baking. Like Italian villages through the centuries, in Altamura communal ovens were located around the town where most of the bread baking took place. Ovens in the homes were used for meat, casseroles, and other single family repasts, but communal ovens held special advantages not easily achieved in one's home.

  For one, bread baking requires a much hotter oven than one used for cooking, and wood burning ovens provided a crisp finish to the loaves not possible in gas or electric ovens. So the women of Altamura insisted on using the communal ovens as their ancestors had done and maintained this throwback to past traditions with love and attention.

  In this neighborhood, the oven sat in the middle of a small square, too small to be considered a piazza yet large enough to host a bread oven with two ports on the side and a large wood-stoked fire burning in the interior. The wood was piled in the middle of the oven, usually early in the morning before the men headed off to the farmland outside the village. It was allowed to burn to a heated brilliance for a few hours. The prolonged combustion heated up the stones of the oven, and would be tended and fed throughout the day.

  By mid-morning, the stones of the oven were hot enough to begin baking and the women of the neighboring streets came with the loaves they had prepared after breakfast. The dough balls would b
e shaped then slashed with a mark – some like an “x”; others just parallel markings – distinctive for each family so the finished products could be reclaimed by the owners after baking. Each woman, in turn, would toss some corn meal on a great wooden paddle fitted with a long handle, and the loaves would be slid into the oven around the perimeter, equally far from the wood fire and the heated stones that shaped the dome of the oven.

  Every few minutes, the women would reach into the fiery interior with the paddles, pushing and rotating the loaves, occasionally checking each for doneness, but never interrupting the continuing banter among the gathered bakers. This was a time of socializing for the ladies, and the hour or so spent at the oven was a precious time that none wanted to miss.

  Stories were told about the families, the events in Altamura and the region, and – always – the activities of their children. Some of the stories were ribald, as the mothers recounted the dating habits of their children and others. This morning was no exception, and Carlo's presence made for some friendly jesting, since the men of the town were seldom privy to the conversations of these women at the oven.

  Zia Filomena grasped her paddle in two hands, shoved it into the oven then poked around the interior. Carlo was watching her movements and studying her method of minding the loaves, while Zia's friends studied him. When Zia was finished tidying up the loaves and their position in the oven, she looked at Carlo to see if he was paying attention, then laughed when she realized that the circle of middle-aged women seemed more interested in the young man than the bread in the oven.

  “Fermatevi,” she said, “stop,” although she laughed. “Do you want black bricks for your dinner tonight, or bread?”

  Carlo suddenly noticed what was going on around him and blushed. To cover his embarrassment, he quickly switched to questioning Zia Filomena