Since these days mark the 73rd anniversary of the battle of Monte Cassino, I decided to post an article regarding this subject as I did on my WWII Facebook page. The original link is here:
https://www.facebook.com/World-War-II-Day-by-Day-247421648799105/
The battle of Monte Cassino was a conflict, marked with many Allied crimes beginning with the destruction of the historic monastery , ignoring the safety of the monks and civillians staying in there. Lying in a protected historic zone, the monastery had been left unoccupied by the Germans. The capture of Monte Cassino came at a high price for both Allied and German forces. Among all those killed and wounded there was a series of crimes against the innocent civillian population, something that was hushed up in the rest of Europe.
Italy had the bad luck to be the first nation to experience the benefits of “multiculturalism” with the french term of “Marocchinate” that is used to indicate the atrocities commited by Moroccan soldiers of the French Expeditionary Corps against Italian civillians regardless of age and gender, during the whole Italian campaign 1943-1945. Moroccan soldiers were operating in groups of 70 men, many of those related to each other. They used to decapitate their enemies and keeping the ears as victory trophies. The “Goumiers”, as they used to call Moroccans, began their atrocities from the start of the invasion of Italy. The french archives report that rape, murder and plunder incidents were isolated acts, commited by small groups of men in the first phases of the campaign. The scale of these crimes became larger as the Allies moved further inland.
The night of 19th of May 1944, immedietly after the break of the “Gustav Line”, thousands of Goumiers and other colonial soldiers spread to the towns and villages of the Frosinone province, where Monte Cassino belongs, commiting mass rape and murder. In one of the first incidents, the mayor of a town with 2,500 residents reported the rape of 700 women, resulting in many deaths. According to some sources, a total of more than 7,000 civilians, including children, were raped by Goumiers. Two sisters, 15 and 18 years old, were raped by more than 200 Moroccans each. One of them died from the abuse. The other spent her last 53 years in a mental hospital. Men who tried to protect their wives and daughters were murdered.
In May of 1944, a British Intelligence officer in Naples reported that French colonial soldiers are unchecked. Every time they enter another town or village, mass rape and murder takes place. French General Alphonse Juin, commander of the FEC was criticised for the barbarism of his men to such a degree that even the Pope intervened. De Gaulle told Alphonse Juin that no colonial soldiers will enter Rome, even though outside of it, they were still allowed to do whatever they want.
During the whole Italian campaign, more than 60,000 women were sexually abused, children as young as 11 years old included. Only 360 colonial soldiers were court-martialed. Some of them were executed and the rest of them were imprisoned. After the war the Italians raised a memorial at Castro dei Volsci with the name of “Mamma Ciociara” in memory of all victims of Allied atrocities in Italy. The memorial day is on February 10th.
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