ITALY: The Gold of Dongo

One morning in late April of 1945, a military convoy snaked its way through a thin rain along the tortuous mountain road that winds from Milan along the side of Lake Como to the Swiss frontier. Near Dongo, 30 miles from the Swiss border, the lead armored car was stopped by a roadblock. Italian partisans, members of the fabled 52nd Garibaldi Brigade, began their search. One of the things they found was a grotesque figure of a man in a swastika-marked helmet with a German corporal's greatcoat draped over his black-shirted Fascist uniform. Two days later the squat man,...

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