Honour for woman who saved Italian village from Nazis

A 91-year-old woman who saved her entire village from death at the hands of the Nazis has won recognition after her story emerged 74 years later.

Gabriella Ezra, who now lives in Brighton, intervened to stop her father Luigi and 37 other inhabitants of a village in her native Italy from being massacred by firing squad. She has now been awarded a Star of Italy medal after her son Mark wrote to the Italian embassy describing his mother’s actions on the morning of April 28 1945.

Gabriella, who was 17, pleaded with a German officer to show mercy to the villagers of Cappella di Scorze, near Venice, who had been rounded up and locked in a cowshed. The Germans, seeking retribution for an attack on their men by Italian partisans, had previously executed 31 men in a neighbouring town following partisan action.

“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. “They 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.’ They searched the men, but they had hidden their partisan armbands in the cowshed.”

The next day the Germans fled the village, hours before it was liberated by the Allies. After the war Gabriella met and married Captain Peter Ezra, an Army officer.

Her son Mark, 65, a film director, recently wrote a letter to the Italian embassy to tell his mother’s extraordinary tale.

The Italian ambassador presented her with the Star of Italy, awarded to British and Commonwealth forces who served in the Italian campaign from 1943 to 1945.