the story of Gennarino Capuozzo
The Four Days of Naples they were a moment of the highest civil value, in which the city of Naples was admired by all of Italy for its sacrifice in terms of human lives. A story behind the four days in particular went around the web, crossing various social networks. In fact, almost 80 years have passed but the memory of those heroic moments is still vivid in the elderly and also in the young, bearers of the imperishable memory of their ancestors. For this reason, at the bottom of the article we have inserted the film (youtube) which in 1962 celebrated the heroic event.
The Four Days of Naples: the story that goes crazy on the web
The September 27, 1943 began the 4 days of Naples. A heroic episode, unique in Italian history, which was handed down under the name of “Four Days of Naples”: in fact for four days, from 27 to 30 September 1943, during the Second World Warthe Neapolitans against the Germans and managed alone to free their city from occupation.
Alone, without an army, fighting in the streets not only with weapons, found with gimmicks, but also with furniture, mattresses, bathtubs that lodge from the balconies and windows to clear the way for the German troops. Alone, men, women, children, students, shopkeepers, taxi drivers.
The four days were worth to the city of Naples the awarding of the gold medal for military valor. A medal awarded to all the protagonists and their stories.
The story of Gennarino Capuozzo, the urchin who fought against the Germans
And among the stories there is that of a little hero who has become the symbol of the insurrection: Gennaro Capuozzo. Gennarino was not even 12 years old when he joined that improvised army and his heroic actions of him in those four days struck the hearts of the Neapolitans. His courage convinced the Neapolitan people to react and rebel against the oppression of the Nazi soldiers. Gennarino Capuozzo was a urchin like so many kids in Naples who had been made brazen and rebellious by hunger and war. Just as many children in Naples still are today, who have to deal with the reality of the city since they were children, so too Gennarino was a handsome boy, with pitch black hair and bright eyes. He was born in 1932 in a damp and dark house in the alleys of the Old Town and he soon learned to live more on the street than in the few square meters he shared with his parents and 3 brothers. Her mother was called Concetta and after him she had in fact given birth to 3 other children. When he, his father in 1941, left to fight in a war that never belonged to the Neapolitans, he found himself the head of the family.
Gennarino was little more than a child, but then he grew up quickly in the alleys of Naples: every morning he left the house early and went to work in a shop as a committed apprentice: “Mammà, nun te worry. By now I am big, I know that I am going to do it ”, he said in Neapolitan language with the air of a man lived to his mother. He earned a few cents, but he had to be content: those were terrible days for Naples. For days the city had been subjected to bombing by the allies. The victims were many: there are talk of over 20,000 dead under the bombing of the Angloameriacans!
The confusion of the armistice and the German occupation of Naples
When the armistice orders were signed on 8 September by Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the Italian armed forces found themselves in disarray, due to the lack of precise details of the military. The armistice also threw Naples into total confusion: the Germans, who were previously allies, became enemies of the population and on 12 September the Nazis occupied the city and declared a state of siege. In revenge for the armistice, which they considered an Italian betrayal, the Germans carried out tremendous retaliation, such as the forced eviction of all the houses on the coast up to 300 m from the sea and the order of deportation to the German labor camps of all males between 18 and 33 years old.
At that point the Neapolitans understood that the time had come to react. In particular, it is women who are the first to oppose and prevent their men from being deported to Germany. The clashes and ambushes of German troops resulted in severe retaliation. The Colonel Hans Scholl he ordered a curfew and declared a state of siege with the order to kill all those who were responsible for hostile actions to the German troops: “for every German Neapolitans will be killed”, he proclaimed.
The streets were blocked and the men who unfortunately found themselves in the streets of the city were forcibly loaded onto trucks and locked up in the stadium waiting to be deported. Houses and shops were ransacked and men and women who opposed were shot on the spot. As the days passed, the population in Naples began to assume hostiles. Episodes of intolerance and manifestations intensified. On September 27, however, the women and men of Naples understood that they should react. That day, an episode happened that definitively ignited the spirits of the Neapolitans: they were killed point-blank, in front of numerous citizens, while they were drinking from a fountain. The news of that brutal murder went around the city. People began to crowd the streets armed, to burn enemy trucks, to create barricades to prevent the passage of German troops. The inhabitants of the Vomero they managed to get hold of weapons and ammunition deposited in an arsenal. In a moment of confusion, the prisoners escaped from the prisons and joined the rioters and the few Italian soldiers left in disarray. Thus began the Four Days of Naples!
It was September 28 when Gennarino Capuozzo, like every morning, left the house to go to work. Outside the alley he heard the shots of a gun, turned and saw the bodies of a young woman, a man and a child in front of the entrance to a bakery and, a little further on, a truck with some German soldiers driving away. . Just then he saw a group of boys older than him: they had escaped from juvenile prison and had decided to fight the Germans. Without thinking about it, Gennarino went home, took a flask of water and a loaf of bread, gave her mother a kiss and said: “Mammà, don’t wait for me, I’ll come back when Napule is free”. His mother did not even have time to make the usual recommendations that Gennarino had already disappeared into the dark alleys. Behind him a group of rioters formed, most of them children. They joined the adults. They immediately went to help the insurgents of the “Blender“:” Currete, currete guagliò “, said Gennarino while with the other comrades he carried the weapons stolen from fallen Germans for the rioters, shuttling between the barricades and ammunition depots of the barracks in via Foria and via San Giovanni in Carbonara .
The urchins against the Germans during the Four Days of Naples
The news that a group of children were putting the Nazi troops to the test soon spread to the city. Journalists started talking about Genna and there were some photographers who managed to portray him while he was making his war. The Neapolitans who took up the rifle became more and more numerous in a few hours. In the neighborhood Materdeia German patrol was kept under siege for hours.
On the third day of fierce fighting came the rumor that a Mugnano 10 people had been shot, including three women and three children. Gennarino Capuozzo with his companions decided to avenge those martyrs and with his group lurks behind some concrete blocks on the road between Blender And Marianella and waited for the truck with the Germans to be near. As soon as the vehicle with the Germans was within range, they fanned the weapons they possessed in the streets: they fired machine guns and threw hand grenades. The German truck tried to get off the road, but Gennarino managed to get close and throw a hand grenade at the military vehicle. “Now get off”, Gennarino ordered, aiming his machine gun. Three soldiers got out of the truck with their arms raised; the commander who had ordered the massacre shortly before, the driver and the machine gunner. The Germans were taken as prisoners to the insurgent camp and Gennarino was treated like a hero.
That enterprise galvanized Gennarino to such an extent that he decided not to stop. He went to via Santa Teresa where dozens of Neapolitans had balconite barricades, with furniture that the population had thrown out of windows and, to repel the Germans. He took a dead soldier’s machine gunner, stuffed his pockets with hand grenades, and ran fearlessly to a German tank. “Now we will show you who the Neapolitans are“, scream. “You will see who Gennarino Capuozzo is”. But as he was removing the safety from the bomb, an enemy grenade hit him full-on.
The Neapolitans who struggled a few meters away saw him disappear in the dust of the explosion, they did not even hear him scream, they ran to him hoping to help him, but it was late. His body lay motionless, his face disfigured by the blast, the bomb still clenched in his fist. It was the last act of heroism of those four days that changed the face of Naples at war. It was September 29th. That same evening, the Germans negotiated surrender with the insurgents: they were able to get out of Naples unscathed in exchange for the release of the hostages still prisoners at the sports field. The next day, September 30, the German troops left the city. The Neapolitans had won and the body of Gennarino Capuozzo was venerated as war martyrs are venerated.
Concetta Capuozzo, Gennarino’s mother, was awarded a gold medal for valor in memory of that little, great hero: “Prodigious boy who was an admirable example of precocious daring and sublime heroism”, as it was written in the motivation for the recognition. And another was attributed to the whole city of Naples because “with his glorious example he pointed out to all Italians the way to freedom, justice, the salvation of the homeland”.
After the bombings, the grenades, the dead and the terror, even the Vesuvius, after a terrible eruption that coincided precisely with the four days, he stopped smoking. “He has risen ‘o cappiell”, the Neapolitans said, interpreting it as a sign of greeting to the rebirth that was about to begin.
The video of the film of The Four Days of Naples
Text from the blog Oxymoron