The massacre at the Vercelli Psychiatric Hospital was the summary execution of a group of Italian Social Republic (RSI) militiamen by partisans of the 182nd Garibaldi Brigade "Pietro Camana". The massacre took place partly in the town of Vercelli and partly in the town of Greggio between 12 and 13 May 1945. The number of executed RSI members, who had been taken from a concentration camp at the Novara stadium,Bermani, p. 330. are estimated between 51 and 65.

The memory of the event was for decades handed down almost solely by veterans of the CSR: only in more recent years have some historians taken up the subject, which is now reconstructed sufficiently comprehensively in its general outlines, although differing in some details depending on the sources.

Sources The first historiographical treatment of the Vercelli massacre was provided by Domenico Roccia - a partisan and representative of the Action Party to the purge commission set up by the local CLN - who in his 1949 work Il Giellismo Vercellese published the names of the victims, as well as excerpts from the diary of a lieutenant of the Black Brigades "Bruno Ponzecchi" detained at the Novara Stadium.Roccia, pp. 218-224.

Thereafter, for years, the subject was not covered by historians. Thus, news about the events remained reported in police, judicial and parliamentary sources, as well as in journalistic articles: some of them still dating back to the late 1940s,Bermani, p. 330, quotes an article from Il Tempo of November 22, 1949. while others were written on the occasion of the various requests for authorization to proceed against the former partisan commanders accused of the massacre, who in the meantime had become deputies.Examples include: ; They were also mentioned by the journalist and writer Giampaolo Pansa in his La Resistenza in Piemonte: guida bibliografica 1943-1963 published in 1965,Pansa in his bibliographical guide catalogs a fair number of journalistic sources including articles from Il Popolo Nuovo of Turin and La Verità of Vercelli. In the chapter titled The Liberation of Vercelli he cites an article by Tino Morbelli titled Unveiled the Mystery of the Psychiatric Hospital, (La Verità, Vercelli, June 8, 1946, pp. 1-2), adding that in it were "the names of the 64 Republican fascists shot at the Vercelli hospital after the liberation and the list of the escapees." See Pansa 1965, p. 127 and the journalist-historian Giorgio Pisanò, a veteran of the RSI, in Storia della guerra civile in Italia of 1972.Giorgio Pisanò, Storia della guerra civile in Italia, Milano, FPE, 1972, p. 1640: [...] no trial was ever brought against Moranino and Ortona who were also responsible, among other things, for the appalling massacre at the Vercelli psychiatric hospital, where, seventy fascists were slaughtered with unprecedented cruelty under the wheels of moving trucks in the building's courtyard." The number of seventy dead is believed to be undocumented - as is all the data on fascists killed in the province of Vercelli provided by Pisanò - by Piero Ambrosio, L'insurrezione in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , op. cit., nota 42 .

In 1991, historian and ex-partisan Claudio Pavone wrote about it in his A Civil War. In 1996, the Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society of Vercelli "Cino Moscatelli"Following the creation of the province of Biella, the Institute changed its name by adding the name Biella as well. sent to print the third volume of a work by Cesare Bermani on the history of the Garibaldi Brigades in Valsesia, within which what is called "the incident of Vercelli" was reconstructed.Bermani, pp. 329-330.

Giampaolo Pansa in 2003 reported the episode in a few pages of his Il sangue dei vinti, expressly citing as his sources the aforementioned Bermani and Pierangelo Pavesi, a journalist close to the reductive associations of the RSI who in 2002 had published the first edition of La Colonna Morsero. The following year, journalist and writer Raffaello Uboldi wrote about the Vercelli massacre in the essay 25 aprile 1945. I giorni dell'odio e della libertà, calling the episode the "massacre of the Vercelli Psychiatric Hospital."Uboldi, p. 324.

Historical context

The war of liberation in the province of Vercelli In the province of Vercelli,Today the territory is divided between the provinces of Biella and Vercelli.The paragraph is a summary by Piero Ambrosio, La Resistenza in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , from the website of the Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Provinces of Biella and Vercelli. the first partisan action in the liberation war was the attack launched on 2 December 1943 against a garrison of blackshirts in Varallo, following which the fascists reported their first casualty in the area.Piero Ambrosio, La provincia di Vercelli durante la Rsi. Cenni storici , from the website of the Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Provinces of Biella and Vercelli: "On December 2, a division of black shirts sent to Varallo, to garrison an area that was becoming "crucial," had been attacked shortly after its arrival and the fascists had on that occasion their first fallen soldier in the province, Militia squad leader Leandro Guida." On 10 December a second fascist was killed, engaged with his unit in repressing a strike in Tollegno. The next day, however, the commissioner of the Republican Fascist Party in Ponzone di Trivero, Bruno Ponzecchi, was killed by partisans.Piero Ambrosio, La provincia di Vercelli durante la Rsi. Cenni storici , op. cit.: "On the evening of the 11th, the local fascist commissar, Bruno Ponzecchi, the first fallen fascist in the area, had been killed by partisans in Ponzone." These partisan actions preceded and were accompanied by general strikes by workers in the Biellese and Valsesia areas.Piero Ambrosio, La Resistenza in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , op. cit.: "The first real action of war took place in Varallo where, on December 2, Garibaldians from the "Gramsci" detachment, commanded by Cino Moscatelli, attacked a contingent of black shirts encamped in the Town Hall: the fascists had one dead, the partisans some wounded. A few days later, on December 10, the Biella Garibaldians attacked fascists who were deporting some workers guilty of organizing a strike at the Tollegno Spinning Mill. These actions were the premise of a decisive intervention by the partisans in support of the strikes that began to develop in Valsessera from December 15, and which resulted in the general strike of the workers of the Biella and Valsesia areas."

On 19 December, the Tagliamento Legion was flocked to Vercelli, which through the posting of notices threatened the shooting of ten hostages for every RSI soldier or German soldier killed. The threat was first implemented in Borgosesia on 22 December following the previous day's killing of two militiamen from the 63rd "M" Battalion.Piero Ambrosio, La provincia di Vercelli durante la Rsi. Cenni storici , op. cit.: "Finally, the threat contained in the notice: 'the killing of a soldier of the Republican National Guard or any other agent of the public force or a Germanic soldier will cost the lives of 10 local individuals' was implemented following the killing in Borgosesia on December 21 of (not one but) two soldiers of the 63rd battalion." Also part of the unit was the writer Carlo Mazzantini (father of writer Margaret), who will recall the whole affair in his A cercar la bella morte, Venice, Marsilio 1995, pp. 74 ff. The Tagliamento was also guilty of massacres, fires and looting from its first days of activity in the province.Piero Ambrosio, La Resistenza in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , op. cit.: "Partisan actions and strikes drew the attention of the "authorities" of the Republic of Salò to what was happening in these areas. [...] was sent to Vercelli, and later to Valsesia and Biella, the 63rd "Tagliamento" battalion, which was responsible for heinous massacres, fires, looting from the first days of its activity in our province."

The partisan war in the Vercelli area was characterized by the presence of multiple partisan units in the area, which engaged not only in classic local guerrilla actions, but also in mountain and lowland open field combat operations, with some local successes alternating with defeats.As an example among the defeats is the so-called "Caporetto of Alagna" (July 1944), when the partisan forces liberated Valsesia and Valsassera for a short time, only to be beaten at Alagna, at the foot of Monte Rosa. On Piero Ambrosio, La Resistenza in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , op. cit. In addition to this, the partisan forces attempted to liberate some areas of the province, coming to constitute real enclaves within the territory controlled by the republican fascists and the Germans: this is the case, for example, of the Republic of Valsesia and Valsessera, which were free between June and July 1944 and then - the latter - from March 1945. The last reprisal perpetrated by the fascists in the province took place on 9 March 1945 in Salussola with the shooting of twenty or twenty-one partisans, in response to a partisan ambush conducted on March 6 in the same locality and resulting in the death of four fascists.Piero Ambrosio, La Resistenza in provincia di Vercelli. Brevi cenni , op. cit.: "On March 9, the last massacre perpetrated by the fascists took place in Salussola: after horrendous torture, twenty-one partisans were shot. In response, the Biella Cln ordered a general strike of protest [...] which was carried out imposingly in all the factories." Other sources state instead that the partisans killed were twenty; see for example L'eccidio di Salussola: 8 e 9 marzo 1945, from the Salussola village website/portal.Piero Ambrosio (edited by), Verso la vittoria. I bollettini militari delle formazioni partigiane della provincia di Vercelli (gennaio-aprile 1945) from "L'impegno", a. V, no. 1, March 1985, Institute for the History of the Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Provinces of Biella and Vercelli," Cit. (from partisan bulletin): "On March 6 an enemy column moving between Zimone and Salussola is attacked by a patrol of the Gl brigade... 4 dead and 2 wounded, 3 prisoners, 2 trucks, a machine gun, 7 muskets, pistols and hand grenades. Following this brilliant attack the enemy vented its wrath with the ferocious Salussola shootings." Frequent partisan actions around Salussola, mainly by the 75th Garibaldi "Maffei" brigade and the local GL brigade, from early 1945 inflicted important and frequent losses among the fascist units.

The last month of the war in the Vercelli area