With World War II raging on throughout Europe, those civilians who were merely trying to survive in their day-to-day lives in southern Italy were on the brink of starvation. They needed food, and to find some they opted to hop a freight train to the countryside to barter for whatever they could find. On March 2nd, hundreds of people either boarded the no. 8017 train at Balvano station with legitimate tickets or snuck into one of the train's many freight cars. The vast majority of those onboard would be dead within hours.