The massacre at San Terenzo Monti (Fivizzano) was one of a long series of massacres carried out by the Nazi-Fascists in the Apuan region during the summer of 1944. This area lay immediately behind the Tyrrhenian sector of the Gothic Line (German and Italian defensive line) and was part of a zone marked by the Allied advance in Tuscany, the Nazi retreat and the intensification of the partisan armed struggle.

The memorial in the cemetery of Pietrasanta commemorates the killing of 53 men on 19 August in San Terenzo Monti. They along with other civilians, had been rounded up by soldiers of the German 16th SS Armoured Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Major Walter Reder, in Valdicastello on 12 August 1944 (the same day as the Sant’Anna di Stazzema massacre). From Valdicastello they were taken to Nozzano where they remained for a few days.

On 17 August, following a partisan attack in Via Bardine in San Terenzo Monti, sixteen German soldiers were killed. Two days later on the 19 August the 53 men who had previously been captured were taken from Nozzano and transported by lorry to the scene of the attack. They were first tied with barbed wire to trees, posts, vine shoots and the very lorry that had been set alight by the partisans. They were then shot dead. Signs referring to the partisan attack were posted at the scene.

On the same day, German soldiers rounded up and killed 106 people in the nearby Via di Valla.

Various memorials and monuments have been erected throughout the Apuan area in memory of the massacres at San Terenzo Monti and Valla.