Trani town, Apulia, Italy, September 16 1943: as a result of an ambush by Canadian soldiers and Italian soldiers, lurking behind a wall near the cemetery of Trani, there were five Germans dead and ten wounded. Two days later, the German troops, in retaliation, rounded up fifty civilian hostages, including even a 10 year old boy, and piled them in a square to shoot them publicly.
Monsignor Petronelli, bishop of the city, called by the hostages relatives, with his vicar Monsignor Raffaele Perrone, which by the way was in bed sick, showed up in that square.
There he found the commander, an Austrian lieutenant, and tried to intercede for the hostages, but without great results.
Due to the futility of his verbal request, the archbishop, after having blessed with his cross the hostages, offered in exchange for the citizens himself and his life, putting himself in front of the firing squad.
Meanwhile, he was joined in front of the German machine guns by the secretary of the local Fascist Party Antonio Bassi and by the podestà (fascist mayor) of Trani Giuseppe Pappolla, they also saying that the civilians had no guilt.
After a negotiation of eight hours, from six in the morning until two in the afternoon, lieutenant Wagner became convinced and released the fifty prisoners, after the archbishop had already imparted his final blessing to the onlookers.
Monsignor Petronelli, that is, the church, and the mayor and the secretary of the Fascio, that is, the local fascist political structure, asked and obtained the release of hostages by the Germans, thus avoiding a sort of “littler” Trani’s Fosse Ardeatine.
But the story does not end here. It sounds like a fairy tale with a happy ending, but it is not so.
The young German lieutenant whose full name was Jelo Webl Will Wagner, was accused by his superiors for not having executed the order, ie the killing, for having received the gift of the gold ring of the archbishop of Trani; which, however, had wanted to give him because, as a Catholic, reminded him of the noble gesture made. Wagner, however, as every German soldier, was well aware of how the Wehrmacht is used to punish “insubordination”… But inside his Catholic consciousness, he knew also he had received an inhuman and unjust order.
The German officer was forced to dig a grave with his own hands and, after demonstrating a more than decent demeanor, he was shot. The body was then transferred to the German cemetery of Monte Cassino.
Now a question: is he still listed as insubordination guilty, isn’t he? I hope he was finally recognized for what he was, an honest man forced to become an hero.
