On the evening of June 18th, 1944, Sunday, nine German soldiers, perhaps paratroopers of “Hermann Göring” division, approached a farmhouse at the Madonna, near Civitella. After having dinner, they headed for the recreational club of the village and sat at a table, with their weapons on the ground. A group of partisans, learning that some German soldiers had entered the village, decided to disarm them. At about 9.00 pm, they entered the club. Here the versions diverge: some say that the partisans immediately opened fire, others instead favour an intimation of surrender, whereupon the Germans would react. In any case, there was a firefight and three Germans fell to the ground. One of them, unharmed, was able to escape. In the recreational club the confusion was at its highest, the civilians were fleeing from everywhere and someone had also been wounded. Two German soldiers were dead and one woundedAt about 11.00 pm, a German soldier arrived to the farmhouse of the Madonna. He was carrying on his shoulders a comrade, the soldier wounded at the recreational club, who was washed and treated until his companions took him away on a truck. In the village, meanwhile, when the day broke, the population fled in terror fearing a retaliation. Meanwhile, the archpriest Don Alcide Lazzeri, learned of the incident and decided to wash the two dead Germans and organize their funeral with the few women he managed to find.But the Germans still didn’t react. On June 20th, a German officer arrived, perhaps a doctor, to examine the two bodies that were still lying in the club. With the aid of an interpreter, he listened to Don Lazzeri, who recalled the stages of the attack and said that the civilians weren’t guilty of what had happened. The officer accepted, as a sign of good will, that the two soldiers would be buried in the local cemetery, and so happened, with the participation of a picket of German soldiers. But still the intentions of the soldiers were not clear, and the villagers were afraid to return. After a series of investigations, the Germans went away. Indeed, some said to the inhabitants of Civitella to be calm, because there would be no reprisals. But instead, on the morning of June 29th, 1944, when for the feast of St. Peter and Paul many people had returned home, units of paratroopers of the armored division “Hermann Göring”, flanked by other soldiers, some of them Italians, surrounded the village at dawn. All men were captured in their homes and taken to the town square, among them don Lazzeri, who offered his life in exchange for that of the civilians. He wasn’t listened to: he was killed with a gunshot to the head as all the other 149 victims, including two priests. Then, the bodies were thrown into the houses of the village to which the Germans set fire.