PG 62 - Grumello del Piano

Sheet by: Costantino Di Sante

General data

Town: Grumello del Piano

Province: Bergamo

Region: Lombardia

Location/Address: Grumellina Lallio - Grumello del Piano

Type of camp: Prisoner of War camp

Number: 62

Italian military mail service number: 3200

Intended to: NCOs – Troops

Local jurisdiction: Difesa Territoriale di Milano

Railroad station: Bergamo

Accommodation: military quarters

Capacity: 3000

Operating: from 08/1941 to 09/1943

Commanding Officer: Lt. Col. Francesco Turco

Brief chronology:
5 May 1941: the camp was opened; it was intended for Yugoslavian PoWs.
February 1943: the first large group of British PoWs arrived.
May 1943: there were more than 1,600 British PoWs.
Summer 1943: all the PoWs were assigned to work detachments.
16 June 1943: the camp’s commandant killed the Cypriot PoW Lambros Christofi in the Orio al Serio detachment.

Allied prisoners in the Grumello del Piano camp

Date Generals Officers NCOs Troops TOT
30.9.1942 2 2
31.10.1942 2 2
30.11.1942 2 2
31.12.1942 2 2
31.1.1943 4 4
28.2.1943 34 218 252
31.3.1943 7 246 253
30.4.1943 7 743 750
31.5.1943 19 1604 1623
30.6.1943 20 1631 1651
31.8.1943 15 1651 1666
 

Camp’s overview

PG 62 Grumello del Piano was established a few km south of Bergamo by refurbishing a former button factory/linen mill and a coal power plant. The former was in a locality of the Grumellina del Piano municipality known as «Grumellina» because of an old farmhouse in the area, while the latter was in the nearby municipality of Lallio. For this reason, the camp was initially labelled «Grumellina Lallio». However, the Chief of Staff decided it would be PG 62 Grumello del Piano because no municipality had this name.
After some work, the camp was divided into two sectors encircled by a double barbed wire fence, watchtowers, and rooftop terraces. A section of the former button factory housed the command and the guards.
On 5 May 1941, PG 62 officially opened and, in the following weeks, the first Yugoslavian PoWs arrived together with some civilians captured in the Balkans. During the spring of 1942, many PoWs were sent to work in the fields of local farms. Up to February 1943, only four British Pows were in the camp, while there were 1,380 Yugoslavians, 877 Greeks, and 528 French. In February 1943, 252 British PoWs (165 English, 85 South Africans, and 2 Middle-Easterners) were transferred to the camp. At the end of May, as roughly 1,000 more Britsh PoWs were transferred from PG 70 Monturano, their number grew to 1,623. During this period, PG 62 held 4,874 PoWs: 622 British, 586 South Africans, 374 Cypriots, one Middle-Easterner, and 623 French. They were kept separated from the rest of the PoWs, who numbered 1,649 Yugoslavians and 980 Greeks. All Allied PoWs, like many of the PoWs in PG 62, were only temporarily kept in the camp, as they were then assigned to work detachments. They were all employed as farm hands, except for some 50 PoWs who worked in a foundry (most likely the Flack in Sesto San Giovanni).
Meanwhile, PG 62 became a hub to coordinate many work detachments, 65 in total, and, in August, the number of PoWs reached 6,760. Of these, 1,666 were British, 3,217 Yugoslavians, 1,253 Greeks, and 606 French.
Almost all British PoWs were assigned to 25 detachments during this period. Unfortunately, there is information about only two of them: on 15 April 1943, 50 South Africans were sent to the military shoe factory Martegani in Tradate (Varese), and on 16 April 1943, 50 South African PoWs were sent to the farm estate Piantanica (Cascina Colombara) in Solbiate Olona (Varese). As for the rest, there is only incomplete information: 62/VI Varese Grumello del Piano (Bergamo); 62/XXIX Vernate (Milan) held 55 PoWs; 62/LI Plemo, district of Esine (Brescia) held 297 PoWs. The others are known only by their identification numer: 63 PoWs were held in XXII; 67 in XXIII; 50 in XXIV; 41 in XXVI; 48 in XXVIII; 55 in XXIX; 45 in XXX; 41 in XXXI; 47 in XXXII; 50 in XLI; 50 in XLIV; 39 in XLV; 49 in XLVI; 50 in XLVII; 50 in XLVIII; 47 in XLIX; 38 in L; 297 in LI and 135 in LV.
The PoW numbers, and the roman numeral which identified the detachment, could change every few days for various reasons. For example, when the work was finished, the PoWs were transferred to another place, or they were injured or sick. Some PoWs refused to work or went on strike because the work was too hard, or their treatment was inadequate. This happened, for example, in mid-June 1943, as 50 South Africans who worked at the shoe factory Martegani in Tradate went on strike. According to some sources, they did it because they had not received their cigarettes and for other shortcomings of the administrative personnel; according to others, they did not want «help the enemy» by producing military shoes. The strike lasted for five hours and ended after the intervention of a senior officer from PG 62. The “trouble-maker”, Corporal William Hobson, was arrested. Some PoWs were handcuffed and chained, threatened at gunpoint with a pistol, and beaten.
In the spring, some PoWs in PG 62 also refused to work at the Falck factory in Sesto San Giovanni, as it produced military supplies. They were sentenced to 37 days in prison in the camp’s cell, without much food and with no sanitary equipment at their disposal.
Another mass strike happened in the summer of 1943, as the Cypriot PoWs refused to work and were accused of mutiny. Some protests took place in the detachments because the food the PoWs were given was inadequate for their work and because of the poor work conditions. Living conditions were not good in PG 62, especially from a sanitary and hygienic point of view. At least 10 Yugoslavian PoWs died as a result of malnutrition or illness.
In June 1943, in the Orio al Serio detachment, at the local airport, Cypriot PoW Lambros Christofi was killed by the camp’s commander, Col. Francesco Turco, because he refused to work to support the Italian war effort. After the war, Turco was investigated and put on trial for Christofi’s murder and the mistreatment of the other PoWs in PG 62. In 1946, he was sentenced to death, which was immediately commuted to 15 years in prison.
The day after 8 September 1943, the camp’s guards and those of the detachments allowed the PoWs to escape. However, the Germans quickly recaptured many of them as the local population did not help them, and they could not cross into Switzerland.
The camp remained empty for two days. The population and the escaping PoWs plundered it. During the following months, PG 62 was used to concentrate Italian, Serbian, Greek and a few Allied prisoners. They were either deported to Germany or sent to work in nearby detachments.
Near the camp’s site, on 15 April 2008, a plaque was placed to commemorate it.

Archival sources

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