The Secret of Altamura: Nazi Crimes, Italian Treasure

by Dick Rosano

  “That's not possible, is it?” he asked the waiter.

  “Certo, certo,” said the waiter, now warming to Martin. “People of this area, Matera in particular, lived in the caves until after the Second World War. The government forced them out in the 1950s, but we still hear stories about the Sassi and their people.”

  Martin quickly considered the implications of this. If the waiter was right, and if his grandfather's search led him to the Sassi during World War II, the colonel would have encountered Italian peasants still occupying the caves where he believed the art and jewels to be.

  But it also supported Anselm Bernhard's notion that the great cache of art would be in the Sassi. “Im erdreich” might mean in the ground, but wouldn't it be safer to protect the hidden treasure with sentries who still occupied the caves?

  “How can I go there? Do I need a guide?”

  The waiter thought about the request, peering at the sky as if looking for the answer.

  “No, a guide is not necessary, but my cousin knows the Sassi well. He has been there many times, and I'm sure he would like to explain them to you.”

  “Good. Thank you,” said Martin. “How can I meet him?”

  Chapter 23

  Establishing Trust

  Martin waited about thirty minutes and was having another espresso when a thin, wiry man about twenty-five years old stepped in front of him, threw his leg over the chair and slid into the seat. He had a broad smile, a stubble of beard, and perfect white teeth. A cigarette dangled from the first two fingers of his left hand as he offered his right hand to shake Martin's.

  “Good morning,” the man said cheerily with only a trace of Italian accent. “I am Santo, and I understand you want to learn about the Sassi. Many men, they lived there for many centuries. Probably the first men to live in Italy. Even before the Greeks came here,” he said.

  According to Santo, the Romans settled the area in the 3rd century B.C., but it was overrun by the Lombards in the 7th century. During the Middle Ages, monks saw the caves up on the hill, saw that many people already lived there, and established monasteries among the Sassi. Over the next few centuries, the region was conquered by the Byzantines, Goths, Ostrogoths, Spanish Bourbons, the Normans, then the Germans during the war.

  At this last comment, Martin blanched.

  But Santo didn't notice his reaction so he continued. But after ten more minutes, Santo stopped suddenly, assuming his summary had impressed the visitor and would be enough to win the contract to guide Martin through the hills.

  “Signore, mi dispiace,” Santo said. “I'm so sorry. I talk so much and I don't even ask your name.”

  Martin expected this moment would come and he had considered offering a false name to avoid connection to Anselm Bernhard. But he knew that a deceit at this juncture might prove debilitating later in the relationship.

  “It is Martin. Martin Bernhard.”

  “Va bene,” Santo replied happily, “Signor Bernhard, it would be my pleasure to accompany you to the Sassi and tell you all that I know about them.”

  The guide excused himself from the table to report to his cousin, the waiter, that he would be leaving soon to take the young man on a tour of the caves. A whispered conversation occurred at the doorway to the kitchen, with the waiter pointing to Martin and Santo's expression turning from one of success to worried doubt. But he returned to the table with a broad smile on his lips.

  “Allora,” he began, “so, we go?”

  “Sì,” was Martin's reply. He worried a little that the conversation back in the doorway concerned his identity, but Santo seemed ready to proceed. Martin hoped to take advantage of this sliver of trust and complete his mission.

  Chapter 24

  Riding the Waves into Messina, September 3, 1943

  By the summer of 1943, the Allied conquest of North Africa and invasion of Sicily seriously diminished the Fascist government's power. Mussolini had promised Italy greatness and expected to be the leader of a new Roman Empire, but his army's defeats undermined his support at home and reduced his government to puppet status, controlled by Hitler to maintain a military presence in Italy.

  The Führer needed to keep Mussolini in power but the collapse of popular support for Il Duce left even a weak King Vittorio Emanuele with little choice. On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was forced from power and later arrested. His replacement, Pietro Badoglio, was a man more inclined to accommodate the king and immediately began secret talks with the Allied forces to negotiate an armistice for Italy.

  Meanwhile, the British and American forces were racing to Messina with plans to cross the straits and make landfall on the shores of the Italian mainland to begin the march north. Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery led the British force and General George Patton commanded the Americans.

  On September 3, 1943, as Montgomery's forces were landing in the toe of the Italian boot, Badoglio surrendered to the Allies, although the action was initially kept secret, in part because of the continued presence of large German military contingents throughout Italy. The peace agreement acknowledged the large German military occupation, but required the Badoglio government to assist the Allies in expelling the Nazi forces from Italy.

  Chapter 25

  An Afternoon in the Sassi

  Martin slid into the passenger seat of Santo's car. He wasn't sure of the make or model. In fact, Martin thought the vehicle might even be a cannibalized version made of parts from several models. Of course there were no seat belts or air conditioning, but in his visits to Italy he had come to realize Italians didn't like air conditioning which they believed was bad for the joints and preferred to swelter in the heat of the summer.

  Since arriving in Altamura, Martin had done little driving, so he didn't recognize the roads Santo took to escape the populated area, though he could tell by the sun that they were headed due south. They left the colorful views of the white-washed buildings and green gardens behind them, and they entered upon a parched land that stretched ahead of the car for miles.

  Soon Martin saw the rise of the Murge ahead along with the contours of the Gravina riverbed. In a few more minutes, openings in the caves on the cliffs became more apparent. As they got closer, Martin began to pick out individual dwellings and some larger silhouettes that he assumed would be the churches and other communal caves that were part of the Sassi world.

  Santo parked his car in a public parking lot at the base of the cliffs. Emerging from the heat of the cramped car, Martin surveyed the surroundings.

  “How strange,” Martin said referring to the newly paved parking lot. “I'm surprised to find such a modern convenience here.”

  “Sì, all the cars are parked here. The Sassi have attracted much attention in recent years, and tourists come. Like you!” Santo said to his guest.

  He showed Martin the way to enter the neighborhood of the caves, then directed him down the paths that connected some of the most congested groupings. Every so often, Martin pulled the journal from his pocket and thumbed through the notes, looking at the groupings of caves around him as he did so.

  Santo was intrigued with Martin's close inspection and asked what the book was about.

  “Is this a guidebook to the Sassi?”

  Martin quickly returned the journal to his pocket.

  “No, no, it's just a book that has been in my family. It's about Italy. It's not important,” he stammered.

  Santo continued to think about the little book as they proceeded through various caves, but his running banter was now more sparse as his mind kept returning to Martin's journal.

  The art collector focused on his surroundings, concerned that consulting Anselm's book again might raise more of Santo's suspicions. In fixing his attention on the caves, Martin began to understand the world's fascination with the Sassi. His memory wandered back to his research on the area, and to the books he had already read about the people of both the Murge and the Sassi. The descriptions of the area and its civilization from his books were echoed
in Santo's explanations, and Santo's words and Martin's recollections merged into a long-running narrative on southern Italy, Matera and the Sassi, and the eons that civilization reigned in this area.

  “Thousands of years ago Greeks settled in the southern part of our country, but old societies were already there,” said Santo. “Caves were dug into the hillside of the Murge, safely placed to survive bad weather and hungry animals. By the time the Greeks got there, there was already a civilization of early Italians, people living alongside farm animals in the Sassi, sometimes not going down the slopes into the valley below for long stretches of time.”

  Martin knew that cisterns had been dug among the caves to catch rain water for the people there. In time, communal buildings snuggled in between the rude domestic caves; later still, wall painting and other adornments appeared, giving this strange rocky landscape a more developed, cultured feel.

  Through thousands of years, the Sassi lived in the caves while civilization grew up in the area surrounding the Murge. Empires rose and fell, wars were fought and won – or lost – and still generation after generation lived in the Sassi and seemed likely to be there for all eternity.

  “It wasn't until after World War II that the Italian government forced people to leave the Sassi,” continued Santo. He explained that occasional bouts of poor health that sometimes resembled an epidemic in the caves were blamed on the living conditions there. Politically, the government was concerned that having people living in caves would make modern Italy seem primitive. Clearing the caves of human existence would erase that narrative.

  In the 1950s, the government issued warnings, and then stepped up its efforts, demanding that the Sassi be evacuated.

  But Martin realized that when his grandfather had visited this area in search of “great treasure,” the Sassi would have still been occupied and its people could very well have been the custodians of the precious artifacts.

  Martin emerged slowly from his reverie as Santo's voice reached his ears.

  “This is the great Chiesa di Santa Maria d'Idris,” he said, waving his hand toward the carved altar and paintings on the walls.

  Martin was awed by the frescoes covering the walls of the church. Though faded, the original blue, pink, yellow, and orange hues were still visible, bringing to life scenes from the Old and New Testament. The characters depicted in some of the paintings would have been known only to the original inhabitants of these caves, but Martin glowed with excitement as he distinguished the elders who addressed assembled masses, the scenes of animal sacrifice, and portrayals of the souls rising into the heavens above.

  As an art historian, he had focused on Renaissance art and could recognize a Michelangelo or a Botticelli painting from just a few square centimeters on a page, but these ancient paintings – made by a less talented artist but with similar devotion – reached out to the passion he had within him, the passion he once felt as an avid young art student at the university.

  Unlike the great masterpieces that were typically commissioned by a rich or powerful patron, Martin knew that these paintings were rendered by simple people whose love of the Sassi and devotion to their religion were the only inspiration – and only payment. Martin approached the fresco on one wall and inspected the details of the composition. A broad staircase dominated the center of the painting, on which stood a man in long robes accompanied by a slightly shorter woman with flowing dark hair and wearing robes of yellow and pink, tied with a rope sash. The people gathered around them stood at the base of the steps but all pointed upward toward some destination that the couple was inclined toward.

  Although he was impressed, he also had to admit that these old artworks were best appreciated from a distance, where the ravages of time and weather lost their affect and the whole of the composition could be taken in with a single glance.

  He remembered entries in his grandfather's journal referring to a kirche, or church in the Sassi. This was one but he knew there would be others. Still, he couldn't resist drawing the book from his pocket to refresh his memory of Anselm's notes. Santo watched him closely, while Martin inspected the journal, as his eyes scanned the walls and then the floor, index finger pointing at one of the entries on the page.

  They spent a few more moments in that church, then exited into the midday sunlight. Santo reached into his sack and drew out a water bottle, a loaf of bread, and another wrapped bundle. Pulling on the paper that enclosed it, Santo revealed a substantial hunk of meat that had been cooked with sage and olive oil, its scent quickly wafting toward Martin. Santo offered some of the repast to his guest.

  “No, grazie,” came Martin's reply.

  Santo shrugged his shoulders in the Italians' timeless gesture of “whatever,” as he pulled hunks of bread from the loaf, washed down with great gulps of water.

  Martin studied the journal again and found some vague references to churches, some with names and some without. The single word versteckt – hidden – appeared several times, but not in conjunction with other words or phrases, so he couldn't tell what his grandfather was trying to convey.

  “What is that?” Santo asked again. “The old book of your family's?”

  Santo spoke to him through bites of bread, something about other churches, and Martin realized that he was being a bit too obvious. He folded the book closed and returned it to his pocket.

  “Yes,” was Martin's only reply.

  “So, your name is Bernhard,” Santo continued.

  Martin paused and then said, “Yes, my name is Martin Bernhard.” He toyed with revealing that his grandfather had come to this area during the war, but decided against it.

  “My cousin, he says he knows Bernhard,” Santo said.

  “Anselm Bernhard was my grandfather. He was an officer in the German army during the war.”

  “Sì, sì,” Santo said, nodding. “I know this. He was here during the war. My people remember him. He was not a good man.”

  A slight color rose up Martin's neck and into his cheeks, more from embarrassment than anger.

  “But you are a good man,” said Santo with raised eyebrows. At first, Martin took that as a compliment, but as Santo's eyes bore into him, he realized that the guide was asking him a question.

  Martin swallowed hard, briefly looked down at his feet, and began his well-practiced speech about his grandfather.

  “During the war, the Nazis did many terrible things, in this land and in others. We, the German people are not like them, we are ashamed that that evil empire ever arose from our culture. Anselm Bernhard was like many other decent Germans who got swept up in the fervor that was inspired by Hitler and the Third Reich. What they did wasn't right, but their actions didn't come from their own souls, they came from Hitler's threats and the actions of his henchmen.”

  “Decent,” Santo repeated, focusing on a solitary word in Martin's narrative. “Anselm Bernhard was a decent man.”

  Martin squirmed. He knew too much about his grandfather's activities, the shameful thefts and more shameful attacks on Italian women that his grandmother had told him about. He used the word 'decent' to try to mitigate the blame cast on his entire family, but at the same time, he knew that his grandfather didn't deserve to be described so.

  “You,” Santo said, “you are a decent man?”

  Martin nodded slightly, but refrained from putting up a defense of his grandfather.

  Santo turned his attention back to the food and water he had in his hands, but eyed Martin more coldly than before. Shortly after, they resumed their tour of the Sassi, this time with fewer words spoken between them, and with Martin more reluctant than ever to draw the journal from his pocket.

  As he studied the caves and surrounding area, they completed a brief tour after about another hour. There were too many caves and too many churches for Martin to continue in his quest in one afternoon. But this brief visit and general tour would give him ideas to contemplate later in the day, when he could peruse the journal in the privacy of his own room in Alt
amura.

  Chapter 26

  New Lessons

  Carlo spent the morning at the bread ovens again under Zia Filomena's tutelage. The ladies gathered to bake bread were a generation older than their American visitor, but they had embraced him warmly, to the point of preening and sometimes embarrassing themselves.

  “Carlo, do you want to knead my dough?” asked Lidia with a twinkle in her eye. Marta stood next to her but elbowed Lidia after that comment.

  Carlo blushed lightly but took it kindly enough; at times he laughed at their jokes, knowing that these ladies were acting out an age-old drama in the human story between man and woman. The compliments are sometimes exaggerated, the jokes sometimes risque, but this is a part of relationships between the sexes that has played out in every society for centuries.

  Zia Filomena gave him careful instruction on the shape and texture of the dough before it went into the oven. She passed her wrinkled hand close to the mouth of the fire-hot pit, even dipping her long fingers quickly into the opening to test the temperature. Not satisfied with the heat, Zia reached behind her for a long-handled wooden spade, poking it into the oven to rearrange the timbers that burned within. Smacking the paddle on the edge of the oven to cast off the embers, she tested the temperature again, nodded her head in a satisfied way, and turned toward Carlo.

  “In your oven, at home, the temperature can be set by a dial. It's easy, semplice,” she said, “but the walls of your oven do not concentrate the heat like our stones do.” Zia emphasized her comment by pointing to the rounded roof of the oven in front of her.

  “Home baking won't produce the good bread, the bread that Altamura is known for.” She smiled, nodding her head, “The bread that the spirit gives us.”

  Carlo knew that Zia Filomena and the other women at the oven – in fact, all the people of Altamura – used the term 'spirit' with more reverence than a simple reference to yeast. To them, the spirit moved the bread and wine and brought these products into being. He wondered whether the Chiesa dello Spirito Santo, the Church of the Holy Spirit, was named for their yeast, or the town's reference to the yeast came from the church.