**The Valmara – Madonna di Ponte customs office around 1940.** ETH Library Zurich

A story of resistance and escape

During the Second World War, numerous people attempted to flee persecution across the Italian-Swiss border into Ticino. This included Egone Gruenberger, who only managed to escape to freedom on his second attempt and after a long ordeal.

Raphael Rues

Raphael Rues is a historian and specialises in Ticino and the German-fascist presence in Northern Italy.

The year is 1943 and the Second World War is raging in Europe, casting a long shadow of fear and uncertainty over millions of people. In Italy in particular, the situation is becoming increasingly confusing. After the coup of 25 July 1943, Benito Mussolini is forced out of government and imprisoned. After the Allies had won in 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 begins negotiations for an armistice with the Allies. Chaos brakes out on 8 September 1943 when the armistice is declared. There is a mass exodus throughout northern Italy, with at least 20,000 refugees arriving in Ticino alone, mainly Italian soldiers and former Allied prisoners. Many of those who are unable to flee to Switzerland, mainly Italian military personnel, are deported by train through Austria to the German Reich. As the days go by, northern Italy is occupied by German troops, who also hunt down Jews. One of them was Egone Gruenberger, born in 1920, a young Jewish man who was living with his pregnant wife in Fiume (then Italy, now Rijeka in Croatia) at the time. When the Nazis took control of the country, Egone and four members of his family were increasingly threatened with persecution and deportation.

Portraits of Egone and Edith Gruenberger. Swiss Federal Archives

The situation for the Jewish community is very difficult in autumn 1943. Mussolini returns to Italy after his “liberation” and installs a puppet government – known as the Repubblica di Salò – which is largely made up of hardline fascists and persecutes Jews. Desperate to escape the clutches of the Nazis, Egone and his family - his pregnant wife Edith, his mother Adele, his aunt Regina and his brother Erico - set off on a dangerous journey via Milan and Cannobio to seek refuge in Switzerland. On 17 December 1943, the Gruenberger family attempted to cross the border at Brissago, not without having paid 55,000 Italian Lira - a considerable sum today - to cross the border secretly. However, their hopes were dashed when they were intercepted by Swiss border guards on the mountainside above Brissago and sent back the next day. As the two older women were no longer up to the rigours of another mountain hike, the Gruenberger family were taken by boat from Brissago to Dirinella, on the other side of Lake Maggiore, where they were taken to the border. Only Egone's wife Edith, who is five months pregnant, is allowed to stay in Switzerland.

**Brissago boat landing stage, around 2000.** ETH Library Zurich

**Interrogation protocol from February 1944, which reports on the admission of Edith Gruenberger and the simultaneous rejection of the rest of the family.** Swiss Federal Archives

After a short walk, the family is captured by German customs border guards at Pino railway station. Their intention was to return to Luino and then travel on to Milan. The German customs border guards who occupied the Italian border with Ticino were hastily deployed by Austria and France in September 1943. They were older soldiers who looked more like customs officers. They would later have many problems in the fight against the partisans, partly due to 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 Swiss border guards and the army. Egone and his family were imprisoned in Varese, where they suffered under harsh conditions and the constant threat of violence. Egone's written testimony, which was quoted for the first time by the Ticino historian Renata Broggini, is unambiguous. It contains the names of several Jews who were caught at the border. It is not possible to determine whether they had all been turned back by the Swiss troops posted at the border or whether they were captured on the way to the border but still on Italian territory. After a few weeks in Varese, Egone is transferred to the San Vittore prison in the centre of Milan, a notorious symbol of oppression and torture. Here he made his first – failed – escape attempt with other Jewish comrades. Egone reports how the imprisonment in Milan is again accompanied by beatings and torture. The Germans have only been occupying northern Italy for a few months and yet the well-oiled machinery of persecution is already running at full swing.

The San Vittore prison in a photograph from around 1880. — **The *San Vittore* prison in a photograph from around 1880.** Wikimedia

At the end of January 1944, Egone's worst fears were realised when he and his family members were loaded onto a train to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland. The train departs from the infamous Binario 21 in Milan's Stazione Centrale, which is now a museum commemorating the Shoah. The convoy of 600 prisoners consists mainly of Jewish families who were turned away or captured at the Ticino border until January 1944.

The Binario 21 Museum shows the goods wagon in which the Jewish people were deported. — The *Binario 21 Museum* shows the goods wagon in which the Jewish people were deported. Obviously an uncomfortable commemoration, so much so that the entrance is always guarded by an Italian army escort, so many threats and attacks have been made in recent years. Memoriale della Shoah / Photo: Raphael Rues

The underground platform 21 originally housed the post office. The wagons were loaded and brought to the surface in a lift. A “Wall of Names” now commemorates the people who were deported from there to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The names of the few survivors are written in orange. — The underground platform 21 originally housed the post office. The wagons were loaded and brought to the surface in a lift. A *“Wall of Names”* now commemorates the people who were deported from there to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The names of the few survivors are written in orange. Memoriale della Shoah / Photo: Raphael Rues

Egone's report is unique and precise. We know the time of departure from Milan and also the number he was allocated for the transport. There are 56 Jews in each wagon. The train is escorted by a company of SS police, the same unit that will hunt down partisans in the Ossola region a few months later and crush the partisan republic of Ossola. Near Verona, Egone seizes the opportunity to jump off the moving train with two other men and flee. With his heart pounding and his mind sharp, he disappears into the surrounding woods near Cerea, not far from Verona. After finding refuge in a church, he is taken in and cared for by a local family. For the first time in 60 days, he is able to take a bath, change his clothes and eat properly. A few weeks later, Egone makes his way back to Milan. Exhausted but unharmed, he seeks refuge with a network of resistance fighters who give him a false identity. The sole purpose of the identity card is to enable him to flee back across the border to Switzerland. In the meantime, his wife has been taken to southern Ticino.

Rapid change in refugee policy

With renewed 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 region. However, the route from Masera is difficult and particularly risky in the middle of winter. After days of gruelling walking, Egone finally reached the Swiss border on 19 February 1944, followed by various interrogations and protocols. How quickly times change is shown by the fact that this time, although he openly identifies himself as a Jew, he is accepted by the Swiss authorities in Onsernone Valley without any problems. The rejections of Jews at the southern border with Italy infact ended in the course of December 1943, and later all Jews were generally accepted. 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 (18 December 1943).

**Questionnaire answered by Egon Gruenberger after the second, successful attempt to enter Switzerland. Bellinzona, 20 February 1944.** Swiss Federal Archives

Egone and his wife began a new life in Switzerland, free from the fear and oppression he had endured in Italy. Edith Gruenberger lost their first child. Family happiness returned in 1947 with the birth 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 came to a happy end. Others were not so lucky. The convoy on which the rest of his family remained arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 7 February 1944. Of the 600 Jews who were deported from Milan on this transport, only just 22 survived. One of the survivors is the now 93-year-old Italian senator Liliana Segre. She was 13 years old at the time and, together with her father and two older uncles, was turned back by a Fribourg infantry unit in Arzo near Mendrisio at the beginning of December 1943.

In the region between Ascona and Verbania, there is the Percorso della Speranza, which traces the events of this period, while the Insubrica Historica association offers a trek along the routes taken by refugees, partisans and deserters to reach Switzerland.

More of: 20th / 21st century Politics War/battle

Further posts

The bogus Doctor Meyer

Katrin Brunner 16.09.2020 The biography of Johann Jakob Meyer from Zurich reads like an adventure novel: womaniser, confidence trickster, and up to his eyeballs in debt. How could such a man become a Greek hero?

The Siege of Missolonghi, depicted by Greek painter Panagiotis Zographos.

The smuggler invasion

Jean-Luc Rickenbacher 06.04.2018 Smuggling on Switzerland’s southern border increased rapidly during the Second World War. People now began being smuggled over the border too.

The Ossola Republic

Andrej Abplanalp 10.09.2017 In autumn 1944, partisan groups liberated a sizeable territory around Domodossola from the Nazis and founded their own republic. But the resistance fighters were at odds with one another and after just over a month the dream of an independent state came to an end. The story of a tragedy on the border with Switzerland.