A past not to be forgotten. Thanks to the Italian Marenzi, the existence of Hagerwelle has been proven. The reconstruction of the events in the book "Hitler's Slave"
Hagerwelle does not exist. For fifty years Germany denied the existence of one of the bloodiest and most atrocious concentration camps in history. Today it is a ghost area, it is not found on the geographical maps nor are there any official documents. But there are the memories of the few, very few people who survived that hell. Ten men, including an Italian: Antonio Marenzi. His testimony, combined with a legal battle that lasted almost thirty years, meant that the truth came out definitively.
Hunger, cold and great pain
Antonio Marenzi, Italian, now in his twenties, lives in Cremona. He never erased his past.
The hunger, the cold, the pain, the abuses suffered during that imprisonment cannot be forgotten. He had to live with death before his eyes every day, every hour of his stay in Hagerwelle, where the deportees were left to die of cold, in the courtyard, tied together.
Hitler's slave, published by Santi Editori, is the book that tells his story, that of the only Italian who has returned alive from such a great horror, the only one strongly determined to leave a true testimony of the existence of that camp.
Hagerwelle in Poland was under the control of the Germans during the Second World War. It is an extermination camp without Jews: all the prisoners of war are Italians, Poles, French. None of them have the number tattooed on their arm. But the conditions are equally dire.
The significant episodes of the book Hitler's slave
Mr. Marenzi is an Italian who is aware that he miraculously survived the atrocities in Hagerwelle, but also the Russian bombing that razed him to the ground.
German soldiers kidnap Marenzi when she is not yet 18 in Pula, Croatia, where she attends marine school. He has a passion for large ships. It is September 8, 1943, the day of the entry into force of the armistice signed by the Badoglio government. Marenzi remains in the hands of the Germans for two years but not all of them spend them in Hagerwelle. They do it work in a sugar factory. In the last months of his imprisonment he was sent to the concentration camp.
Another significant episode of the volume is the one in which Marenzi's friendship with three Frenchmen is told, who save his life by rolling up his frozen feet with their balaclavas.
On February 22, 1945, a Russian bombing raids all of Hagerwelle. Marenzi found himself submerged by the corpses of his companions, in the midst of blood and mud, still alive. He made space between the lifeless bodies of the other corpses. Then, the meeting with the other nine survivors.
A long hug, tears, separation. Each of them went home.
The homecoming and the tough legal battle
Marenzi arrived in Cremona on foot, with makeshift means, by train. He found a poor, starving but still intact city. And mum waiting for him at the window.
In 1980 Marenzi started a legal battle to be recognized as a war deportee. But Hagerwelle is nowhere to be found and the Ministry of the Interior and Finance denied any of his requests.
A past not to be forgotten. Today Auschwitz is a warning that no one will forget or deny that what happened.
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