Valli del Pasubio

The comune comes from two realities that for centuries went their separate ways, one on each bank of the Leogra: on the right the Valle dei Signori, so called because it was the possession of the lords da Vivaro, feudatories of the bishop of Vicenza; on the left the Valle dei Conti, which belonged to the counts of Vicenza, the Maltraversi. The coat of arms still says so in four letters, X V C D, traditionally read as Valles Comitum et Dominorum, the valleys of the counts and of the lords, with the Roman numeral said to stand for the valleys through which the stream's tributaries run. It was Napoleon who united the two comuni under the name Valli dei Signori, and only in 1926 did the name change to Valli del Pasubio, after the mountain where the fighting had been. The lords had called German-speaking colonists up here, the so-called cimbri, as woodsmen and miners: and the proof lies in the parish records, where the rector in 1297 is called Fridericus and his successor, in 1303, Teodoricus.

In October 1940 some forty Yugoslav Jews arrived at Valli in a state of free internment, and for two years they lived here, on friendly terms with the people. With the birth of the Italian Social Republic the situation changed: the order to arrest them came on the thirtieth of November 1943, but the local carabinieri found a way to delay carrying it out, and that delay gave the refugees time to slip away, helped by the villagers and by the parish priest don Michele Carlotto, who for this was later recognised among the Righteous Among the Nations. Most of them managed to reach Switzerland, others stayed hidden in Italy: none of the Jews interned at Valli del Pasubio is among the victims of the Holocaust. The single exception was Leon Steinlauf, who had joined the partisans of the Val Leogra and, betrayed by an informer, was killed on the third of April 1945 at the place called Contrà Pietra.