Italian POW Camp PG54 Fara-in-Sabina

That makes sense. I imagine the names were written on the handkerchief before the men were sent elsewhere - they may not all have gone to Acquapendente. Somewhere I have a photo of the only barrack still standing at Acquapendente. I will look for it and post it here.

 

From the www.alleatiinitalia.it website I gather that a group of 100 British and South African prisoners were sent from PG 54 to work at Colfiorito, PG 64, from September 1942 until January of 1943 and then the same group was sent to work on Acquapentente, PG 10, from January until June 1943. My assumption is that they were then returned to PG 54. I counted a 100 names on the handkerchief.

 

] Anton, I will send you a private message with my email address. If you could then send me 20 or so names from the handkerchief (I am having difficulty in reading them) I will look for these men on Ancestry to see if they were sent on to Germany after the armistice or if they remained in Italy until the end of the war. Then it will be possible to see if they left a Liberation Report, consultable on line with an Ancestry subscription, which will give some more detail about what happened to them after June 1943.

The Italian War ministry did not produce documents regarding the camps after that date so to find out what happened in detail we have to rely on the prisoners' testimonies. The Escape Reports of those men like your father, who made it to Allied Lines, contain less detail and many are missing.

I have posted two photos of the officers' block at Acquapendente which I took some years ago.

Regards,

Janet

Edited to change a photo

 

For anyone following this thread, from the list Anton sent me I found the liberation report of another South African whose moves were the same as his father's up to the time of his father's escape. This other prisoner was sent to Germany with the rest of PG 10 in mid September 1943.

 

Way to go Janet; great work!

Kind regards, always,

Jim.

 

Thanks Jim,

Your continued appreciation of what I try to do is much appreciated

Janet

 

You mentioned Montenegrins in PG64. In my dad's diary, after escaping PG54 after the armistice they were captured by Germans but managed to escape from them in Isernia and then hid out in Pesche to await the Allies. Here they encountered some "Monts from 64".

 

Interesting. ISUC, an organization in Umbria which investigates and documents activities which took place in the region between the Armistice and the passage of the front in June -July 1944 has collected a lot of information on the Montenegrins, not only in PG 64 but also in PG 77, even to the extent that the presence of Allied prisoners in these camps is barely mentioned if at all. I wonder where the men your father met had been detained.

Vitellino

 

Sorry, I see they were in 64. Do you have any names?

 

100 British and South African soldiers were sent from PG 54 to work at PG 10 and PG 64, my father among them. At PG 64 someone decorated a handkerchief for my dad with, among other things, a list of 100 British and South African prisoners of war labouring at the camp. I attached the list of names. I am not 100% confident in its accuracy because of ink runs and fading. Images from the handkerchief appear earlier in this post.

 

On 21 January 1943 PG 64 received its first group of civilian internees. They were all Montenegrins. The Allied prisoners had been sent to other camps - principally to Acquapendente PG 10.

On 21 September 1943 it appears that the Montenegrins broke out of PG 64 - indeed last September there was a ceremony to record the event.

So it would seem that the only occasion in which the two groups of internees - POWs and civilians - would have run into each other was when they were on the run south in an attempt to cross the lines.

Vitellino

 

My dad records the encounter on October 21.

 

Hence it seems they must have been civilian internees.

 

In response to your question above whether my dad mentioned any names of the Montenegrins, no, just his passing comment of encountering them.