Borgo Montenero lived through the full horror of the last days of the Nazi-Fascist occupation. After the armistice of 8 September 1943, the Germans occupied central and northern Italy. The frequency of Allied attacks and the possibility of a landing in this area forced the people of San Felice to spend long months as evacuees in the countryside, in the woods and in Montenero.
On the night of 3-4 May 1944, German troops rounded up the men without a regular residence permit. At the end of the night-time round-up, 23 prisoners had been taken; they were marched on foot to the sports ground of Borgo Montenero and sentenced to be shot. Faced with the pleas of the population, the Nazis, believing that “an example had to be made anyway”, decided to shoot five of them at random. The decision immediately proved irrevocable. Moving was the confession of the condemned men heard by Don Giuseppe Capitanio, the heroic parish priest of the village, who several times offered his own life in exchange for the five unfortunate men. The execution took place in the sports ground, with the men blindfolded (except for one brave man who wanted to look his executioners in the face), before the stunned eyes of their relatives.
A simple iron cross was placed at the site of the execution in memory of the five martyrs. Only in the 1950s, thanks to Don Augusto Bonelli, was it decided to build a fitting monument, made up of five large crosses, one for each name recorded on the marble plaque below. Every year on 4 May an open-air public Mass is held in memory of the fallen.
