The monument to Piero Masci

Pietro Masci was born in Capistrello (Aq) on 25th June 1925 of Mr Augusto and Mrs Giovanna Di Domenico.

His family emigrated to Libia where his father, who was a stone mason, opened a stone quarry.

As a young man, he lived between Tripoli and el-Azizia, inside the community of the Italians living there.

In 1930 the birth of his brother Manlio was the first proof of life to him.
In fact his brother was born blind, therefore he had to sacrifice part of his life to help and treat him.

He lived his childhood with that feeling of solidarity that kept with him until his death.

He attended both the primary and secondary school with good results at the Istituto Tecnico per Geometri (A Technical High School) in which he learned to speak and write Arabic.

In the autumn of 1942 he returned to Capistrello together with his mother and brother, because of the spreading of war.
His father had to postpone his departure because he had to look after his business.

War events prevented him from coming back soon. He was able to get back home only in 1946, after a long period of imprisonment.

At home, Piero developed friendly relations with the people of his own age. He shared the happy and sad moments that period of war offered them.
After September 8th 1943, German troops began to occupy the village. They plundered it to get room and board to the marching through soldiers.

At that time Capistrello was close to the Gustav line and alongside one of the main roads, the state road 82 of the Liri valley; it was the only way to reach the front of Cassino, only 80km far from the village.

Piero’s family was forced to host a German non-commissioned officer of the German troops that had been quartered in the village.

In that sad background Piero might have tried to make “friendly relations” with that soldier till March 19th 1943.

That night Piero had gone with some friends to Castellafiume but, on his return, his “lodger” accused him of having stolen some packets of cigarettes from him. Also a young man Giovanni Barbati that lived in the same building, and of the same age, was charged with the same crime.

The two young men were brought to the German headquarters and harshly questioned the whole night, then brought to a street called “traetto”. On the way, Giovanni Barbati was able to escape, so Piero was the only man on whom the soldiers took out their hatred and an absurd violence.

After being tortured and castrated with an iron wire, Piero was killed.

The following day the person who had gone to recover the corpse said that:”…the young man’s face and eyes showed the signs of terror”.

At the same time his mother, worried about his absence after the curfew, asked insistently her “lodger” about her son, but she received no answer.

The following morning she went out to look for her son and with help of his brothers, she was able to get some pieces of information from some countrymen. They directed her to a place known as “Via del traetto”.

There they found the young man dead and hideously tortured.

They never knew what had happened that night.

A lot of assumptions were put forward to understand that horrible crime, but nobody ever knew the truth.

In 1945 the investigations carried out by the Carabinieri weren’t able to find out the true reason of that cruel execution,even though they had ruled out the chance of the trivial motive of that stealing.

It had been probably caused by the will of the German soldiers to terrorise the people of Capistrello because they didn’t want to collaborate with them.
Furthermore they wanted to conceal some possible collutions that the two young men might have found out.

The case was closed.