A story of resistance and escape

The year is 1943. The Second World War is raging in Europe, casting a long shadow of fear and uncertainty over millions of people. The situation is becoming increasingly confusing, especially in Italy. After the coup of July 25, 1943, Benito Mussolini was forced out of the government and imprisoned. After the Allies won North Africa, they landed in Sicily in the summer of 1943 and liberated the island.

With the approval of King Vittorio Emanuele, the military government of General Pietro Badoglio decides to leave the alliance with Nazi Germany and begin negotiations for a ceasefire with the Allies. Chaos erupts from September 8, 1943, when the armistice is declared.

A mass exodus takes place across northern Italy, with at least 20,000 refugees arriving in Ticino alone, mainly Italian soldiers and former Allied prisoners. Many of those who cannot flee to Switzerland, especially Italian soldiers, are deported by train via Austria to the German Empire. As the days pass, northern Italy is militarily occupied by German forces, who are also hunting Jewish people.

One of them is Egone Gruenberger, born in 1920, a young Jewish man who at the time lived with his pregnant wife in Fiume (then Italy, now Rijeka in Croatia). As the Nazis take control of the country, Egone and four members of his family face increasing threats of persecution and deportation.

The situation for the Jewish community in the autumn of 1943 was very difficult. Mussolini returns to Italy after his ‘liberation’ and sets up a puppet government – known as Republic of Salò – a country that consists largely of hard fascists and persecutes Jews.

Desperate to escape the clutches of the Nazis, Egone and his family – his pregnant wife Edith, mother Adele, aunt Regina and his brother Erico – embark on a perilous journey via Milan and Cannobio to seek refuge in Switzerland. On December 17, 1943, the Gruenberger family attempted to cross the border at Brissago, not without paying 55,000 Italian lira – a significant amount today – for the secret border crossing.

However, their hopes are dashed when they are intercepted on the mountainside above Brissago by Swiss border guards and sent back the next day. Because the two older women can no longer cope with the excitement of another mountain hike, the Gruenberger family is taken by boat from Brissago to Dirinella, on the other side of Lake Maggiore, and there to the border. Only Egone’s wife Edith, who is five months pregnant, is allowed to stay in Switzerland.

After a short walk, the family is captured by German customs border guards at Pino train station. Their intention was to return to Luino and then travel to Milan. The German Customs Border Guard, which occupied the Italian border with Ticino, was hastily deployed by Austria and France in September 1943.

They are older soldiers who look more like customs officers. They would later face many problems in the fight against the partisans, including poor armament and training. However, it was easy for them to capture Jewish people (as well as Italian and Allied soldiers and civilians), who were turned back by the Swiss border guards and the army.

Egone and his family are imprisoned in Varese, where they face harsh conditions and the constant threat of violence. Egone’s written testimony, first cited by Ticino historian Renata Broggini, is clear. It contains the names of several Jews arrested at the border. It cannot be determined whether they had all been turned back by the Swiss troops stationed at the border, or whether they had been captured on their way to the border but were still in Italian territory.

After a few weeks in Varese, Egone is sent to… San Vittore-The prison has been moved to the center of Milan, a notorious symbol of oppression and torture. Here there is a first attempt to escape with other Jewish comrades, but it fails. Egone reports how captivity in Milan is again accompanied by abuse and torture. The Germans have only occupied northern Italy for a few months, and yet the well-oiled persecution machine is already in full swing.

In late January 1944, Egone’s worst fears come true when he and his family members are loaded onto a train bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The train leaves the designated place Binary 21 in Milan Central Station which is now a museum commemorating the Shoah. The convoy with 600 prisoners consists mainly of Jewish families who were sent away or captured at the border with Ticino until January 1944.

Egone’s report is unique and accurate. We know the time of departure from Milan and also the number assigned to him for transportation. There are 56 Jews in each freight car. The procession is accompanied by a company of SS police, the same unit that a few months later will track down partisans in the Ossola region and crush the Partisan Republic of Ossola.

Near Verona, Egone takes the opportunity to jump from the moving train with two other men and escape. With a pounding heart and sharp mind, he disappears into the surrounding forests near Cerea, not far from Verona. After finding shelter in a church, he is taken in and cared for by a local family. For the first time in 60 days he can take a bath, change clothes and eat properly.

A few weeks later, Egone returns to Milan. Exhausted but unharmed, he takes refuge with a network of resistance fighters who give him a false identity. The only purpose of the identity card is so that he can flee back across the border to Switzerland. In the meantime, his wife has been taken to the south of Ticino.

With new determination, Egone makes another attempt to reach Switzerland. This time, thanks to a contact in Masera, he joins a group of local partisans who know the most remote routes through the mountains of the upper Ossola area. However, the route from Masera is difficult and particularly risky in the middle of winter.

After days of grueling walking, Egone finally reached the Swiss border on February 19, 1944. Various interrogations and protocols followed. How quickly times change is evident from the fact that this time, although he openly identified himself as a Jew, he was accepted by the Swiss authorities in the Onsernone Valley without any problems. The rejection of Jews at the southern border with Italy ended in December 1943 and later all Jews were admitted. What is special about the Gruenberger case is that, according to the current state of research, it is probably the last documented case of rejection (December 18, 1943).

In Switzerland, Egone starts a new life with his wife, free from the fear and oppression he had to endure in Italy. Edith Gruenberger lost her first child. In 1947, family happiness returned in the form of the couple’s first son. In 1945 the family moved to Milan, where Egone died in 1998.

Egone Gruenberger’s escape from the clutches of National Socialism ultimately had a happy ending. Others were not so lucky. The convoy containing the rest of his family arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on February 7, 1944. Of the 600 Jews deported from Milan on this transport, only about four percent survived. One of the 22 survivors is now 93-year-old Italian senator Liliana Segre. She was then 13 years old and in early December 1943, together with her father and two older uncles, she was rejected by an infantry unit from Freiburg in Arzo near Mendrisio.