Honour for angel who saved village from Nazis
British OAP’s bravery award
SHE was only 17 when she showed incredible courage to rescue 38 villagers from a Nazi firing squad
Now, 74 years later, Gabriella Ezra has finally been recognised for her heroism with a Star of Italy gallantry award.
Mrs Ezra, 91, who now lives in Brighton, intervened to stop her father Luigi and 37 other villagers in her native Italy being massacred in 1945.
She chased after a German officer and pleaded with him to show mercy to the men who had been rounded up and locked in a cowshed. The Germans wanted revenge following an attack on their solders by Italian partisans which left several of them wounded. Nazi troops had previously executed 31 men in a neighbouring town following partisan action.
Mrs Ezra was taken by the officer to speak to his commander – she spoke perfect German after her family lived in Austria. She lied about the villagers having no knowledge of the partisan ambush.
She would have been shot if the Germans had discovered the truth. The villagers had buried their partisan armbands and all the prisoners were released, with the German commander telling them they owed their lives to Mrs Ezra. The next day the Nazis fled the village of Cappella di Scorze, near Venice, which was liberated by the Allies.
The pensioner received the 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 of April 28, 1945.
After the war Mrs Ezra married British Army officer Captain Peter Ezra and moved to Britain. Mark, 65, a documentary maker, said: ‘If my mother had not intervened they would all have been killed. She showed such remarkable courage.
‘My wife’s sister saw a newspaper article about another woman who received an award from the Italian government and I thought my mother deserved the same recognition. 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.’
Mrs Ezra met Captain Ezra, of the Middlesex Regiment, while working as a translator in Mestre near Venice in 1946.
They married in Venice in 1949 and then moved to Hove, East Sussex, where she worked as a language coach. She was greeted as a heroine when she returned to Cappella di Scorze for the first time since the war 25 years ago, with a meal laid out on the square in her honour.
Mrs Ezra 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.’
Her husband had taken part in the North Africa and Sicily campaigns before fighting in the Battle of Anzio in 1944.