大象传媒

My grandfather, Max Hofmann, thought that by the Spring of 1945 he had done enough in the service of the German Parachute regiment, the Fallschirmjaeger, to live out the rest of the war quietly. He was a Sergeant in command of a platoon in a small village, Breda di Piave, in the vicinity of Treviso. He had survived the horrors of the Russian front and the Dantesque hell that was the battle of Monte Cassino. The war was winding down and he had good reason to contemplate a future after the conflict. One day, a band of Yugoslav partisans, apparently escaped forced labourers, turned up in the village unexpectedly; undoubtedly they were on their way north through Trieste back to Yugoslavia. My grandfather, who supervised the retreat of his men was captured along with a comrade just outside the church. The partisans shot his dog and lynched the second German from a tree in the main square. They were just about to do the same to my grandfather when a local man interceded and convinced the partisans that Max was a good German. He was well-liked in Breda, mainly because of his amazing capacity for wine and was going out with a local girl, my future grandmother. The man who saved his life, Evaristo Cenedese, became Max's brother-in-law and proceeded to remind my grandfather for the next 40 years how he had saved his life!!!

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