The Secret of Altamura: Nazi Crimes, Italian Treasure

by Dick Rosano

  About midway through the meal, the discussion turned to the German who was visiting Altamura. Carlo was careful not to repeat his earlier mistake of being too accepting of the outsider. His conversation with Arabella convinced him that the Italians, particularly those in the south, had not forgiven the Nazi regime for the terror they rained down on the villagers during the war.

  During the conversation, Carlo looked for openings to defend Martin or at least to say charitable things about the young art collector. He made judicious use of these openings, but didn't press his case.

  “The Germans nearly destroyed this town,” Cristiano said through a mouthful of Pane di Altamura. “They tried, but we resisted, and we won.”

  “We survived,” corrected Zia Filomena. “We wouldn't have won if the Americans hadn't come,” giving Carlo a thankful nod of her head.

  “The Nazis came to Basilicata, and stole from our families, our churches, and our shops, even though there wasn't much to steal,” said Giovanna. “Everyone was poor, this wasn't a rich country, yet the Germans came and took whatever they wanted.”

  “Was there some military objective for them here?” asked Carlo.

  “No. No military objective,” Cristiano said. “But they knew we couldn't defend ourselves, so we were easy to rob.”

  “Some history books claim that the Germans wanted to control southern Italy so they could launch invasions of other places,” Gia explained, “like North Africa, where they fought…”

  “And lost,” Cristiano said.

  They were quiet for a few moments, and Carlo decided to raise Martin's name.

  “But that young German fellow, he's not like the Nazis.” And he was immediately sorry he tried to win that point.

  “He's a bastard,” blurted Cristiano. There was no room for debate, so Carlo dropped the subject.

  Gia saw the anger in her father's face, so she changed the subject.

  “Papa, Carlo was asking about Nino. I know a bit about his history, but not as much as you do.”

  “He's a gentle soul. His smile is not there, but he has grace in his heart,” Cristiano began.

  “Nino was born in sin, but he has worked in the convent and the church for…well, maybe seventy years. His whole life.”

  Emphasizing his point with his fork, he continued, “He is a saint.”

  Zia Filomena laughed. “He's not a saint. A simpleton maybe, and he has the Lord in his heart. But all he does is take care of the aging buildings. He can fix the pipes and electricity, and he can perform miracles with wood, but I don't think that makes him a saint.”

  “He's quiet,” noticed Carlo.

  “Oh, sì,” said Zia. “As a mouse. Some people say he is following the vow of silence in memory of his mother, or of her sin. But I just think he has nothing to say.”

  Chapter 40

  The German Retreat, September 11, 1943

  A German battalion entered Matera in its march north ahead of the Allied onslaught. The Materani did not resist the initial occupation, but there was no longer any secret about Badoglio's surrender and the Italian cooperation with the American and British forces. So the occupation was tense, and produced some very predictable conflicts in the streets of Matera.

  Outside the small town at the base of the Murge, and in the area surrounding nearby Altamura, the conflicts sometimes took the form of armed combat. The villagers used small arms to resist the Germans, who had more sophisticated weapons. With trained soldiers living among the residents of Matera and Altamura, these fights seldom went beyond guerrilla warfare, but both sides suffered casualties.

  There was a lot of movement with the German columns, as detachments rumbled about readying for combat. The superior officers announced that their final objective was to move further north and form the Gustav Line, an east-west demarcation across the “ankle” of Italy's boot to dig in and prevent further encroachments by the Allies. The commander was Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, a highly decorated officer who had fought in the North African campaign and moved into Italy ahead of the Allied advance to stave off further losses.

  He intended to set up a line of defense that the Allies couldn't break through, thereby saving northern Italy for the German regime.

  The Altamurans knew that the German field marshal considered their region only as a battleground – a parched field between the Germans and the Allies that he would risk annihilating to further the cause of the Third Reich.

  Chapter 41

  Straniero

  The next morning, as Carlo shared coffee and rolls in Filomena's kitchen, the talk returned to the young German visiting Altamura. It was obvious that neither Zia Filomena nor Cristiano trusted him. Their comments were openly disparaging, and any statements Carlo made that even slightly defended the man were waved away without a thought.

  “The people of Altamura don't trust the German,” Cristiano warned, and he told Carlo to avoid him.

  “He's harmless,” Carlo said, “and quite sincere in his quest.”

  “Stay away from the straniero,” repeated Cristiano, thinking that calling Bernhard a foreigner would be enough to get his point across.

  “But I'm a straniero, too,” Carlo responded.

  “No, you're not. You've got Italian blood in your veins.”

  “So did Mussolini,” Carlo said.

  “Mussolini was a Mexican,” he snorted. It was common rumor that Mussolini's father gave him the name Benito after Benito Juárez, a Mexican radical in the 1800s. After Il Duce's fall from grace, the rumor provided Italians with a way to distance him from Italy and her heritage.

  “You can't trust a Nazi,” added Zia. “Look what they did to our town.”

  Gia burned with the same passion as her parents, but she let them carry the argument forward. Carlo listened, occasionally making a weak retort to restore order and fairness to the conversation, but he had no influence over his Altamuran hosts.

  “Stay away from him,” Cristiano said. And just as quickly, he rose from the table, threw his napkin down in disgust and left the room.

  Chapter 42

  September 12, 1943

  With each day spent searching the Sassi, the German soldiers became more concerned that dawdling in this dusty town would land them in POW camps. They could hear the sounds of distant battles and, despite German propaganda to the contrary, they knew that the Allies' cannons and aerial attacks were coming nearer.

  “But he's your commander,” Marisa would say, and she sang empty praises about the man she was sleeping with in order to keep tabs on him. If she left him, or if he grew tired of her pleasures, her plan would not work. Marisa needed to stay close to him and maintain contact with the armed men who surrounded him.

  There had been other nights when she considered reaching for the gun under Bernhard's pillow, but she hesitated. “I can't miss,” she thought. “I may have only one chance and if I am not careful, he'll kill me like he killed Alessia.” She was well aware of her sister's decision to take her own life that night in Venice, but Marisa still blamed the man that had used her and drove her to the action.

  Marisa brooded often about Bernhard's role in her sister's fate, but didn't want to lose the opportunity for revenge by a hasty action. Besides, she still hoped to get help from the German soldiers who were growing disillusioned with their commander.

  “He's going to have us killed,” one soldier said to Hilgendorf. The lieutenant was becoming less willing to engage the conversation, knowing that the troops were right and that his commander was making fatal mistakes in his obsessive search for a treasure that he wasn't even sure existed.

  Just at that moment, Bernhard stepped out of the house and into the circle of soldiers. They parted to let him pass, except for one man who stood in his way. Stopping just inches from the younger man, the colonel stared into the man's face, a mixture of confidence and arrogance that revealed pride in his own position and dismissal of his men's interests. After a few seconds of this face-off, the soldier stepped to t
he side so that Bernhard could pass.

  The colonel walked briskly by the man, brushing shoulders in a macho display of dominance.

  Chapter 43

  An Eye for an Eye

  Getting even is a very human urge. Not revenge, per se. Revenge has overtones of reckless violence and sweeping destruction.

  Getting even is more like just evening the score. The urge also carries the emotional reward of justice and fairness since the perpetrator is only applying the Biblical standard, an eye for an eye.

  Marisa had fewer tools at her disposal to even the score for her sister's death. Bernhard was too powerful and the world was still at war.

  She hoped to rely on the German soldiers under his command to provoke them to violence and to have them pay Bernhard back for her sister's death.

  A simple pistol shot to the head would have satisfied Marisa, and she would have preferred to be the one pulling the trigger and watching the blood burst from the bastard's head.

  But she worried that she would never get that close to him with a loaded weapon.

  So she planned to turn the guns of the German army on him.

  Chapter 44

  Reworking the Journal

  After spending the day with Carlo in the Sassi, Martin sat alone in his hotel room that night, turning pages in the journal and studying Anselm's cryptic messages under the dim electric light by his bed. A brighter light fixture was in the center of the ceiling in this modest room, but Martin decided not to use it since it would light up his window and he preferred the townspeople to know as little as possible about him – including what time he went to bed.

  But his judgment was off because some low-level light still escaped through the curtains by his window, and it created an impression in the town that Martin was engaged in furtive activities within.

  Outside the hotel, on the street below, two men observed the light. One pointed to Martin's room and whispered something; the second man blew out a column of smoke from his cigarette.

  Further back from them, in the shadow thrown up by two adjacent buildings, another man watched with interest. His attention strayed occasionally to the men on the sidewalk as he concentrated on the dim light emitted from the window above.

  Martin was oblivious to the surveillance and remained focused on the journal on his lap. He flipped back to the early pages, reading clear, concise passages about Italian churches, stolen art, and the women his grandfather had slept with. The narrative in the first half of the journal was straightforward and easy to understand.

  Martin re-read these passages to familiarize himself with his grandfather's writing style, the better to piece together the odd notes and comments in the back of the journal devoted to the great secret in southern Italy.

  He was more convinced than ever that this cache would be found in the area of Altamura or Matera, probably in the caves of the Sassi, and very likely in a church. He repeated the singular words that led him to this conclusion:

  “Kirche – church,” he said aloud, then looking about the darkened room, he lowered his voice. “Wie der Sassi – like the Sassi; meaning caves. Im erdreich – in the ground – made him think the caves would be underground, but there was still an incomplete picture in his mind. It was, however, the reason he spent additional time at the Chiesa di Santa Maria d'Idris in the caves.

  Anselm had scribbled the word kleister, or was it klotz? The first meant paste; could it be a reference to the surface of the walls of the church? Was the art hidden behind the walls? Klotz meant block or stone, an easier connection but still not one that unlocked the secret.

  Martin's mind wandered far afield. Klotser was an old slang terms for rings. Is it possible that there were rings in the church, perhaps near the altar, he thought? Or was Anselm simply dreaming about jeweled rings that he hoped to find?

  Martin took out a pad and pen from his suitcase and began scribbling all the words he could think of to link the many separate phrases in his grandfather's journal. He kept the nouns and adjectives, added some verbs in varying forms, and continued juxtaposing the order to create sentences out of nonsense.

  It was when he was applying this grammatical skill to the words that he struck upon an idea. He checked Anselm's notes, then checked his writing style in earlier passages to compare the letters as he wrote them. Just then, the scattered fragments of nouns and verbs changed suddenly into a new word, one that fit the phrasing. The word gleamed brilliantly in Martin's imagination; it nearly lifted off the page like a spirit.

  Martin's muffled yelp of glee caught in his throat as a light thump sounded at his door.

  Chapter 45

  British Liberate Ferramonti, September 14, 1943

  The Campo di Concentramento at Ferramonti had functioned for over three years in Tarsia, a deserted landscape in Calabria, the toe of Italy's boot. It was the largest of Mussolini's camps for Jews and political dissidents, and it represented Il Duce's concession to Hitler that Italy would exercise a degree of anti-Semitism and detain the country's Jews.

  The first camp marshal was Gaetano Marrari, who viewed his responsibility as the protection of the human beings in his charge. No one was executed in Ferramonti; over the years only four internees died there, the result of Allied bombing, not the treatment of the camp's Italian guards.

  The camp developed a reputation in the surrounding area as a place that also had prisoners from various professions. In fact, the medical care provided by some of the interned doctors was better than the people of Tarsia could get outside the camp since Italian country doctors were few and far between. With Marrari's cognizance, and with the guards' willingness to look the other way, it was not uncommon for someone from outside to sneak into the concentration camp to be treated by one of the doctors there.

  When the lax security became known to passing German detachments, a Nazi general decided to pay a visit to the camp and evaluate it for himself. Sensing the threat to their autonomy, the camp chaplain raised a flag above the camp that suggested it was under quarantine. Then he ran to meet the general and warn him that cholera had hit the camp…but that he could enter at his own risk. The Nazi officer cancelled the visit and continued on his way.

  But Ferramonti was still a concentration camp and it still held Italian political prisoners, foreign Jews, and even Catholics against their will. The Allies who were advancing had the concentration camp in their sights.

  On September 14, 1943, British forces liberated Ferramonti and the internees were allowed to return to their lives on the outside…or what was left of such lives.

  Chapter 46

  Uprising in Matera

  On September 21, 1943, two German soldiers assigned to a combat battalion entered a jewelry shop in Matera. Their intentions will never be known, but the shop owner suspected them of theft. By then, the Allies were marching up the boot and local villagers had grown bold enough to confront the remnants of German occupiers.

  A bystander notified the local police of the suspected attempted robbery. In response, the police entered the shop catching the Germans still there. There was a confrontation and the two soldiers were killed.

  This sparked an uprising, the boiling over of a simmering pot of hatred as the Materani took up arms against their oppressors. More German troops were killed by townsmen armed with pistols and carbines.

  The Germans responded with force, using a cannon to blow up a building, and killing eleven Materani. But damage was limited because the Nazi commanders had already ordered the troops to pull out – the advance German forces for the Gustav Line were already fleeing north – so the soldiers in Matera left the insurrection behind, offering little retribution.

  Chapter 47

  Altamura, September 21, 1943

  The detachment of German soldiers under Colonel Anselm Bernhard, however, remained in Altamura, although they had heard the news of the uprising in nearby Matera. They had long feared for their lives, and now they had ample reason to worry about the Italians possibly turning
on them. Their commander's search for the treasure had become a burden that they no longer wanted to bear.

  “What if he does find it?” asked one soldier. “Is he going to share it with us?”

  Before anyone could answer, another man said, “I don't give a damn about the treasure. I want to get out of here before the Allies bomb us to hell.”

  “He's just digging around in the caves, the dirt, and the desert of this god-forsaken place,” said the first. “There's nothing here. Bernhard's dragged us through this wasteland for – what? Nothing!”

  Hilgendorf held up his hands to calm the tirade, but just as he was about to speak, a shot rang out.

  The bullet came from behind him, lodging in the throat of the last man to speak, and blood spurted out of the gaping hole as the man grasped futilely at the mortal wound. The look of shock was drowned in brilliant red blood gushing from his neck, and a pained shriek escaped his lips before his body slumped to the ground.

  Bernhard stepped into the circle of men, the muzzle of his pistol still smoking, and glared back at the mutinous soldiers around him. He would dress them down and remind them that there was a bullet for anyone who betrayed the Fatherland, but before he could begin his warning, another shot rang out from behind him.

  A brass button on the colonel's jacket rocketed off his chest, pushed by the force of a bullet shot at close range from behind. Bernhard stood stock still for a second, watching the dark blood ooze from the hole in his chest, then turned slowly around, lifting his weapon to aim at whomever was standing there.