The Italian Prisoner of War Church

As one approaches Pietermaritzburg on the N3 from the Durban side, a small stone church is visible on the left-hand side near the Market Road interchange. Unfortunately, security concerns in recent years have seen the building of a large brick wall around the church and it is no longer as visible as it once was from the N3. The church may be small, but it has a big history.

It is built on the site of the Pietermaritzburg Concentration Camp, one of four camps that held captured Italian prisoners of war during the Second World War, others being at Zonderwater (the main and biggest camp), Durban and Cape Town. The first group of Italian soldiers captured in East and North Africa (about 5 000 men) arrived at the camp in 1941 and lived first in tents before being accommodated in wooden dormitories.

Early in 1943 the camp chaplain, Padre Giacomo Conte, suggested that the men, amongst whom were many artisans, should build a church to help relieve their boredom. One of the camp staff, Maj B C Knight, authorized the project and helped with some basic hand tools. Work was begun on 2 February 1943 with plans drawn by Sgt Ottaviano Aiello, an architect in civilian life. Sgt Aiello also supervised construction which involved a large team of builders and craftsmen.

It must have been a formidable task: the blocks of shale were quarried about two kilometres from the site (by hand) and then hauled on make-shift carts to the site by using human power. The blocks were trimmed using hand tools, and evidence of this is still clearly visible. The church is 17.3m in length and 7.5m wide and the tower reaches a height of 9.5m – there were no cranes or lifting apparatus and only very rudimentary, home-made scaffolding. The builders were able to obtain a very small amount of cement, but this was used only in “pointing” the face of the walls: the mortar holding the blocks together was made of mud.

On the front of the church there is a triangular gable with the words:

MATRI DIVINAE GRATIAE CAPTIVI ITALICI AD MCMXLIV

(To Our Lady of Divine Grace – Italian prisoners – AD 1944)

The Church took only 13 months and 6 days to build, an outstanding effort under extremely difficult circumstances, including 3 months having been lost to rain.

The service of inauguration and consecration was conducted by the Polish Apostolic Delegate, Archbishop van Gijlswijk on 19 March 1944. In his address on the day, the camp chaplain, Padre Conte, thanked the Supreme Pontiff Pius XII for his generosity in donating “hundreds and hundreds of pounds” towards the cost of the church, the Italian community of Durban for their generosity, especially the donation of the material for the roof, the commander and headquarters of the camp for their assistance, and the non-commissioned officers and men of the camp for their work in building the church. He finished off by saying: “Your Most Reverend Excellency, this church you have blessed has been described as the greatest and best accomplishment by the Italian prisoners in South Africa. This church was also built for our posterity. In the next years, parents, taking a stroll with their children will stop and tell them: “this church was built by the Italians”.

“Almighty God, Lord of the sky and earth, of armies and peace, who with Your Blessing have come down to this place which is now sacred, remain among us, value our goodwill, fortify our Faith, brighten our spirits, shorten these days which are for us very bad indeed.”

Unfortunately, once the prisoners were repatriated (the last left in 1947), the camp was disbanded and the church stood alone in the veld, abandoned and neglected. It was occupied and vandalized by vagrants, and eventually burnt down. Father Anton Dovigo, on holiday in South Africa from Italy in 1962 visited the church and was horrified at its condition. He immediately launched a fund for its restoration.

A new bell was cast in Italy and sent out. A former prisoner, Salvatore Fardella, who had worked on the construction of the original church, installed the bell in the tower and helped to restore the church. The restored church and new bell were blessed by Archbishop Denis Hurley.

Not all the prisoners had returned to Italy at the end of the war: some 870 (out of a total of 109 000 held in South Africa during the war) chose to stay in South Africa, and several hundred more returned to South Africa in the 1950s with their families. Among those who stayed was Fardella, who was born in a village in Messina and served as an infantryman in North Africa. He was wounded and taken prisoner, and after some time in a Cairo military hospital was sent to the camp in Pietermaritzburg. After the war he settled in Howick and started his own construction business.

One of the memorials in the church grounds is to those Italians who lost their lives when a German U-boat mistakenly sank the British troop carrier, the SS Nova Scotia off the Zululand coast on 28 November 1942. The Nova Scotia had sailed from Massawa in East Africa to Durban with 110 crew members, 134 British and South African soldiers and 765 Italian prisoners of war on board.  An estimated 645 Italians died in the sinking and the remains of 120 victims were buried in a common grave in the Italian military cemetery In Hillary, Durban, and were re-interred in Pietermaritzburg in 2008. Their names are recorded on the memorial.

At the same time (2008) the remains of those who had died in the Pietermaritzburg camp (8 in number and who had originally been buried at Mountain Rise Cemetery in the city but had later been re-interred in the Italian military cemetery in Hillary) together with the remains of 27 who had died in the camp in Hillary were also re-interred in the churchyard. Each of these graves is marked by a stone, inscribed with names, rank and dates.

Today the church is the responsibility of the Italian POW Church Trust and is lovingly maintained by the local Italian community and is used for services on the last Sunday of every month and on special occasions such as weddings and funerals.

It was declared a National Monument in 1977 and is today a Provincial Heritage Site.

Acknowledgements:

• Franco and Cathy Muraro and Rosa Paul for their willingness to help with information and photographs.
• “To Our Lady of Divine Grace”, 70^th Anniversary publication by Mr and Mrs B N Fairbrother as a personal contribution to the anniversary (2014). (Mrs Fairbrother’s father was an ex-Italian POW.)
• Sunday Tribune article by Richard Rhys Jones, 22 October 2016.
• Natal Witness article by Stephen Coan, March 1999.