User:Marianna Nespolo/Bruno Pilat
Bruno Pilat | |
|---|---|
 Bruno Pilat at Aprica in December 1942 | |
| Born | 13 april 1913 Follina |
| Died | 9 may 2006 Savona |
| Allegiance | Kingdom of Italy; Italy |
| Service/ | Carabinieri |
| Years of service | 1931-1967 |
| Battles/wars | Second World War |
Bruno Pilat (Follina, April 13th 1913 – Savona, May 9th 2006) was an italian soldier.
Biography[edit]
Born into a family of labourers, he moved with his family from Veneto to Susa in 1928. In June 1942 he married Rosa Piccinetti with whom he had two children: Bianca and Roberto. He spent his entire working life in the Carabinieri Corps. He died in Savona on 9th May 2006.
Military career[edit]
In 1931 he enlisted in the Carabinieri and in 1935 he was honored with the Bronze Medal for Military Valour. In 1937 he left as a volunteer for Eritrea, where he was promoted to deputy brigadier. He returned to Italy in 1938, where he was assigned to command the Campione d’Italia station. In 1940, promoted to brigadier, he became part of the 415 Alpine section of the Julia division[1] with which he arrived in war territory in Albania and in December he was hospitalized in the Kirios military hospital of Tirana. Repatriated in May 1941 after a long convalescence, he was designated in command of the Ponte del Gallo (SO) station and in April 1942 he was transferred to the command of the Aprica station. Captured on 5 August 1944 and deported to Germany, he became a "Hitler’s slave". He fled the concentration camp in early April 1945 and walked to Rovereto disguised as a German driver. On the10th of May of the same year he was reinstated in command of the Aprica station. In September 1945 he was assigned to the C.S. (counterintelligence) in Cernobbio and later he was in command of several territorial stations: Romanengo in 1946, Castelleone in 1957 and, lastly, with the rank of major marshal, Stresa in 1961. The 9th of March 2015 the barracks headquarters of the Carabinieri Station Command of Cison Valmarino was dedicated to his memory.
Anti-fascist activity[edit]
After the 8th of September he collaborated with Don Carozzi to organize the escape of 218 Jews confined to Aprica under his surveillance, personally accompanying to the Swiss border some of them who had to stay behind to wait for fellow countrymen. While remaining in command of the Station (on the basis of the directive issued by the General Command in which it was established that the local carabinieri, in compliance with the war law, had to remain in their post alongside the populations) he immediately began to collaborate with the partisans of the Green Flames by supplying them with weapons, by making active propaganda in order to persuade young people not to enlist in the Italian Social Republic, by promptly warning the draft dodger to escape the searches of the soldiers of the Republican National Guard. He also helped and provided sustenance to numerous allied war prisoners who, coming from concentration camps, headed for Switzerland. With engineer Sergio Tenni (officer of the Freedom Voluntary Corps) he carried out an activity of espionage in favor of the Milan National Liberation Committee, providing the watch list of politicians, the movements of fascist and German forces and useful information to draw a map of Valtellina indicating the German and Fascist garrisons as well as all the Germans fortifications..This map could have been important if Mussolini would have managed to reach Valtellina and to build the last defense of the RSI (Italian Social Republic): the Ridotto of Valtellina. On the 19th of June 1944 he was hospitalized in Sondrio. At the end of his convalescence he did not show back on duty, having decided to join the Green Flames but, due to his anti-fascist activity, he was captured on the 5th of August 1944 by the soldiers of the Confinaria (paramilitary fascist corps). Handed over to the Germans, he was deported to a concentration campi in Germany.
Honorary Titles[edit]
Bronze medal for military valor
«He showed courage and a high sense of duty by facing alone and in an isolated location a convict who shortly before, caught by sudden mental insanity, had been responsible for serious injury, managing to disarm him from the loaded gun he was holding. Subsequently, while he was transferring the arrested man to the barracks, although he was attacked by surprise with a knife to the throat and, although exhausted from the abundant haemorrhage, with virile energy he held up against him, shooting him to death.»
- Ivrea, 7th December 1935
Foundation of the Royal Carabiniere Monument
- 22nd May, 1936
Servais Award
- Turin, 7th June, 1936
Silver badge of honour for civil merit
«Carabinieri station commander, with generous enthusiasm and exceptional sense of self-denial, he worked during the Nazi occupation to alleviate the suffering of many Yugoslav Jewish citizens confined to Italian territory, protecting them from physical violence and promoting their clandestine expatriation to Switzerland. Captured and deported to Germany, he suffered hardship and deprivation until he returned home at the end of the war. Clear example of elected civic virtues and a very high sense of duty.»
- Aprica, 1942/1944
Knight of the Order for Merit of the Italian Republic
- Rome, 23rd February, 1965
Long Command Gold Military Badge of Honour
- Rome, 5th November, 1971
Badge of honor
«To Italian citizens, military and civilians deported and interned in Nazist concentration camps and destined to forced labor for the war economy and to the families of the deceased.»
- Rome, 16th February, 2010
Commemorative plaque
«To honor the Apricians and the soldiers who in the last World War did their utmost for the salvation of the Jewish confined to Aprica, putting their own lives at risk.»
- Aprica, 21st January, 2012
Bibliography[edit]
- Dario Morelli, La montagna non dorme. Le Fiamme verdi nell’Alta Valcamonica. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1968. ISBN 978-88-372-2922-1
- Alan Poletti, Una seconda vita: Aprica - Svizzera 1943, la salvezza, traduzione dall’inglese di Milva Genetti. Madonna di Tirano: Museo Etnografico tiranese, 2012. ISBN 978-88-87523-25-6
- Vanni Farinelli, Noi c’eravamo, la benemerita da Tirano all’Alta Valle nei suoi 150 anni in Valtellina. Tirano: [s.n.], 2009. ISBN non esistente
- Carla Barni, I fuggiaschi della verdissima Aprica. Brescia: Fondazione civiltà̀ Bresciana, 2007. ISBN non esistente
- Liliana Picciotto Fargion, Il libro della memoria, gli ebrei deportati dall’Italia, 1943-1945. Milano: Mursia, 2011. ISBN 978-88-425-2964-4
- Bianca Pilat, Un eroe a sua insaputa, ho detto no a Hitler. Siracusa: Tyche, 2018. ISBN 978-88-99060-57-2
Notes[edit]
- ^ The 3rd Alpine Division Julia was a mountain division of the Royal Italian Army, based in Udine. The Julia Division immediately distinguished itself in the Greek campaign of 1940-1941 and in the Russian campaign of 1942-1943 (as part of the 8th Army) where it suffered enormous losses. http://www.regioesercito.it/reparti/alpini/redivalp3.htm