Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni
Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni: a hamlet of the municipality of Cavriglia
Cavriglia is a municipality located in the eastern part of the province of Arezzo, in Tuscany. Within it lies the hamlet of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, which has a population of around 1000 inhabitants. The hamlet is located on the hills of Chianti towards the Upper Valdarno and is surrounded by the Natural Park of Cavriglia.
Abandonment of inhabitants due to mining activity
Since the mid-1960s, Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni has begun to be abandoned by its inhabitants due to excavation activities in favor of the nearby neocreated Camonti hamlet. Castelnuovo had an important mining basin for the extraction of lignite that is currently depleted. Near this, there was the so-called "Dispensa," a group of buildings created during the First World War as a dormitory for workers who came to work from afar. Until the early 1960s, the complex was still inhabited, but it was gradually abandoned due to the dangers caused by excavation. In the mid-1960s, it was partially destroyed and the evacuation of the inhabitants was completed in the mid-1980s.
Giovanna Marchionni, born at Dispensa on September 26, 1927, still lives today and remembers her childhood spent in this place.
The Cavriglia Massacre
On the morning of July 4, 1944, the village of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni suffered a bloody Nazi massacre in which many innocent civilians were brutally murdered, remembered as the Cavriglia Massacre. At dawn, the hamlets of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni and Meleto Valdarno were surrounded and invaded by Nazi formations of the "Hermann Goring" division in a state of war led by Republican henchmen and favored in their advance by the night's darkness.
It was exactly 6 o'clock in the morning of a torrid summer when the invading horde of Hun attackers assaulted the houses, broke down the front doors, and entered the homes, rounding up the men, ordering women and children to immediately go outside and finally stealing and devastating those poor homes of workers. They made women leave, telling them: "Here we will make great light." 73 men were machine-gunned, and on the pile of dead and wounded, furniture and belongings taken from the houses were piled up.
The whole thing was sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. The priests of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni and Meleto who begged for mercy for their flocks shared the same fate as those destined for slaughter, while expressing comfort through faith. From the hamlet of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni, right after the massacre, the pack of vile assassins reached the nearby hamlets of Massa dei Sabbioni and San Martino. In Massa dei Sabbioni, the SS slaughtered the parish priest Don Morini and a young parishioner with bayonets, and threw their poor bodies into a barn already set on fire. In San Martino, the SS murdered four men.
After the massacres, the Nazi horde placed furniture and other materials on the poor mounds of men, all sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire, so that everything would turn to ashes, to prevent every private family from having the comfort of a tomb to mourn and pray over their loved ones.
Conclusion
The hamlet of Castelnuovo dei Sabbioni has a very complex history, marked by mining activities and the Cavriglia Massacre. Today, the hamlet is a quiet and suggestive place, inserted within the Natural Park of Cavriglia. The Cavriglia Massacre is still remembered today as one of the bloodiest moments in the history of this area of Tuscany and represents a warning for the future not to repeat the horrors of war.
