Italian Partisans Information

I've been through the extracts from European Q forms files and cannot find a trace, but will send you and Diane with unrelated photos you both may find of interest.

 

My Father late John Grasby 4798694 The 4th Bn East Yorks /Green Howards/Prince of Wales Yorkshire Reg was one of the witnesses in a War crime it happened in Forno Cse (Canavese) a small town in the foothills of the Alps. During WW2

He gave evidence to the Judge Advocate General's Office in London in January 1946. He states that he was sent from PG 53 Macerata POW camp to a work camp in the north - PG 112 Turin and managed to escaped and joined with an Italian Partisan Group

My late Father made Friends with a few of the Partisan and I have a letter written in Italian which language my Father spoke fluently he also sent Photos of his family in Italy and on the letter was his full address

I passed the letter and Photos onto Vitellino from the WW2 Talk site who with those extra details Translated the letter and managed to uncover new Information about my Father WW2 escapades, Vitellino conferred the POW escape and Joining an Italian Partisan group which he stayed with for 2 years or so

My Father only spoke Vagally about his War time Experiences so all this Information Gathered by Vitellino is new to me Vitellino is also looking into the Ex-Partisan who wrote the letter to find possible Family connections who posable still live in the Area and can shed more light on my Fathers time with the Partisan hopefully fingers crossed that is possible I would like to thank Vitellino for all the hard work in discovering these pressurise facts about my Father who sadly died in1975


Attach is the 1946 war crime testimony of my Late Father John Grasby

 

Here are 2 more War Crime Document /witness statements from my Father that he gave to the Judge Advocate General's Office in London in January 1946 they tell of Appalling War crimes the people who committed these crimes are evil and inhuman to say the least my father never spoke of these crimes to me or my family understandable and most likely he wanted to forget about these horrendous War time events, but alas I bet he never did.
Again I would like to thank Vitellino from the WW2 Talk for sending me these 2 War Crime Documents

 

The catalyst for this post was a photo on LinkedIn by Alan Malcher:

The photo was not taken in December! It was from July or August 1944, in Pistoia and its liberation.

A "ding dong" ensued with lots of Italian help. Including two references, to an Italian website (in Italian): Il ruolo rimosso delle donne nella resistenza and to a 2014 book review in the Spectator (Australia), headlined:

Link: The woman who invented the Italian resistance | The Spectator Australia

The city Pistoia does appear in a couple of threads, it was liberated by ad hoc task force of Brazilians, Americans and South Africans.

 

BBC Audio | In Our Time | Italo Calvino

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Italian author of Invisible Cities, If On A Winter's Night A Traveller, Cosmicomics and other celebrated novels, fables and short stories of the 20th Century. Calvino (1923 -1985) had a passionate belief that writing and art could make life better for everyone. Despite his parents being scientists, who dearly wanted him to be a scientist too, and his time fighting with the Partisans in Liguria in WWII during which his parents were held hostage by the Nazis, Calvino turned away from realism in his writing. Ideally, he said, he would have liked to be alive in the Enlightenment. He moved towards the fantastical, drawing on his childhood reading while collecting a huge number of the fables of Italy and translating them from dialect into Italian to enrich the shared culture of his fellow citizens. His fresh perspective on the novel continues to inspire writers and delight readers in Italian and in translations around the world.
With
Guido Bonsaver
Professor of Italian Cultural History at the University of Oxford
Jennifer Burns
Professor of Italian Studies at the University of Warwick
And
Beatrice Sica
Associate Professor in Italian Studies at UCL
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Reading list:
Elio Baldi, The Author in Criticism: Italo Calvino’s Authorial Image in Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2020)
Elio Baldi and Cecilia Schwartz, Circulation, Translation and Reception Across Borders: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities Around the World (Routledge, 2024)
Peter Bondanella and Andrea Ciccarelli (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to the Italian Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2003), especially the chapter ‘Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco: Postmodern Masters’
James Butler, ‘Infinite Artichoke’ (London Review of Books, vol. 45, no. 12, 15 June 2023)
Italo Calvino (trans. Martin McLaughlin), The Path to the Spiders’ Nests (first published 1947; Penguin Classics, 2009)
Italo Calvino (trans. Mikki Taylor), The Baron in the Trees (first published 1957; Vintage Classics, 2021)
Italo Calvino, Marcovaldo (first published 1963; Vintage Classics, 2023)
Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver and Ann Goldstein), Difficult Loves and Other Stories (first published 1970; Vintage Classics, 2018)
Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver), Invisible Cities (first published 1972; Vintage Classics, 1997)
Italo Calvino (trans. Patrick Creagh), The Uses of Literature (first published 1980; Houghton Mifflin, 1987)
Italo Calvino (trans. Geoffrey Brock), Six Memos for the Next Millennium (first published 1988; Penguin Classics, 2016)
Italo Calvino (trans. Tim Parks), The Road to San Giovanni (first published 1990; HMH Books, 2014)
Italo Calvino (trans. Ann Goldstein), The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays (Mariner Books Classics, 2023)
Kathryn Hume, Calvino's Fictions: Cogito and Cosmos (Clarendon Press, 1992)
Martin McLaughlin, Italo Calvino (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)"