British Pensioner Awarded Star of Italy for Saving Village From Destruction by Nazis 74 Years Ago
The extraordinary story of a fearless teenage girl who saved an entire village from being executed by the Nazis has come to light after she received a gallantry award 74 years later.
The Telegraph UK, 19 MAR 2019.
Gabriella Ezra, 91, with her Star of Italy medal. Credit: BNPS
Gabriella Ezra, 91, who lives in Brighton, East Sussex, intervened to stop her father Luigi and 37 other inhabitants of a village in her native Italy from being massacred by a Nazi firing squad.
She has now been awarded a prestigious Star of Italy medal after her son Mark wrote to the Italian embassy to make them aware of his mother's heroic actions on the morning April 28, 1945.
Gabriella, who was 17 at the time, chased after a German officer and pleaded with him to show mercy to the villagers of Capella di Scorze, near Venice, who had been rounded up and locked in a cowshed.
The Germans were after retribution following an attack on their men by Italian partisans which had left several of them wounded.
They had previously executed 31 men in a neighbouring town following partisan action, with these prisoners set to suffer the same fate.
Gabriella, who spoke immaculate German as her family had lived in Austria, was taken by the officer to speak to his commander.
She lied about the villagers having no knowledge of the ambush and was told that she would also be shot if the Germans discovered the men were not innocent.
Luckily, the villagers had buried their partisan armbands and all the prisoners were released, with the German commander telling them they owed their lives to Gabriella.
The next day the Germans fled the village, just hours before it was liberated by the Allies.
Gabriella in her native Venice just after the war. Credit: BNPS
After the war Gabriella met and married British army officer Captain Peter Ezra and moved to Britain with him.
Her son Mark, 65, a film director, recently wrote a letter to the Italian embassy to tell his mother's extraordinary tale.
The ambassador subsequently presented her with the Star of Italy, awarded to British and Commonwealth forces who served in the Italian Campaign from 1943 to 1945.
"If my mother had not intervened they would all have been killed," Mark said. "She showed such remarkable courage.
"I wrote to the embassy and my mother was invited to receive the Star of Italy. She was understandably delighted.
"The whole family was at the ceremony and we had a fabulous time."
The local partisans had forewarned the people of Capella di Scorze about the attack on the Germans and advised them to close their shutters in case their windows shattered.
Afterwards the Germans arrived and rounded up 38 men, prompting Gabriella's brave intervention.
The retired language school teacher remembered that after a partisan attack, the Germans took the men from the village, including her father, and locked them in a cowshed.
"I told my mother I had to do something so I ran after the officer and pleaded with him that these men were just farmers who cared about their fields and cows,” she said.
"He took me to the commandant and I begged him not to kill them, telling him again and again these men were innocent.
"They took me outside and lined up the men with a firing squad and said ‘this woman tells me you are innocent. If she's lying I'll kill you all, her first’.
The men were searched, but had hidden their partisan armbands in the cowshed. As they were led away Gabriella’s father passed her his watch and a note for her mother, thinking he was about to be killed.
"But the commandant then ordered for them to be set free saying if there were any more attacks he would destroy the village.
The next morning, British soldiers arrived to liberate the village.
"When the British came we cried tears of joy and embraced them. It was such a relief."
Gabriella met Captain Peter Ezra, of the Middlesex Regiment, while working as a translator in the Mayor's office in Mestre, outside Venice, in 1946.
They married in Venice in 1949 and moved to Hove, where she worked as a language coach.
Capt Ezra died in 2005.
She was greeted as a hero when she first returned to the village 25 years ago, with a meal laid out on the square in her honour.
She said:
"I was showing my daughter around the village when a man spotted me and said 'oh my goodness it's Gabriella'.
"They made a meal for me in the square. They said they were very pleased to see me because I had saved the village."
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