Bernabò was one of three surviving women to have been decorated with a gold medal for civil valour for a heroic act during the 1944 World War II Nazi massacre in the Tuscan village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema.
The Stazzema massacre resulted in 560 unarmed people, including 130 children, being murdered.
On August 12, 1944, Bernabò, who was 16 at the time, rescued three children from certain death - Mario, aged five, and Mauro and Lina, 10.
When Nazi troops stormed the town, Bernabò was in Vaccareccia, where the highest number of civilians were killed - 130 women, children and elderly people - at the Sant’Anna church massacre.
She was awarded with the prestigious honour on October 12, 2004, 60 years after the massacre.
Bernabò was able to flee when German soldiers started shooting at her and at other civilians they had gathered in a barn.
Although seriously wounded, she climbed to the barn’s attic, which had been set on fire, to rescue the three children from certain death.
Her act was “a shining example of courage and of an elevated spirit of abnegation”, said the motivation for the honour granted for acts of exceptional courage that highlight civic virtue.
The other two women of Sant’Anna who were awarded a gold medal were Cesira Pardini, who died in 2022, and Genny Bibolotti Marsili, who died on the day of the massacre.
The August 12, 1944, massacre in Sant’Anna di Stazzema was the second worst WWII Nazi atrocity in Italy after the September 1944 Marzabotto massacre which killed over 770 people.
ANSA