AMPEZZO (UDINE) (ITALPRESS) – “1944 was a year laden with horror, in Italy and in Europe. The gradual withdrawal of Nazi troops left behind a dramatic trail of massacres. The villages of our Apennines and our Alps violated and burned, from Sant’Anna di Stazzema to Marzabotto, from Civitella Val di Chiana to Fivizzano, bear witness to this. To Boves, to Carnia. The Allied offensive hammered the cities with bombings with often tragic outcomes, such as the one that led, in Milan, to the death of 184 children, in the Francesco Crispi Elementary School in Gorla. From Fossoli departed the transports of Jews to the extermination camps of Bergen Belsen and Auschwitz. At the same time, the Resistance movement against fascism, which, with the regime of the Italian Social Republic, was complicit in Nazi ferocity, was gaining strength.” This was said by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in his speech in Ampezzo at the 80th anniversary of the Free Zone of Carnia and Upper Friuli. The celebration opened with the head of state laying a wreath at the War Memorial. “The first embryos of political participation and democratic aspirations were appearing,” the president added. In Ampezzo, the Republic today honors those who contributed to the cause of freedom, animating the experience of the “free zones,” the “Partisan Republics.” A cause exemplarily portrayed here by Gold Medalist Paola Del Din, “Renata,” whom I thank for her presence. “What was the perception of democratic life in 1944? After twenty years of dictatorship in which the memory of the democratic order had been removed, it was necessary to make citizens rediscover the feeling of freedom. This, too, corresponded to the purpose of giving life in the free areas to forms of self-government which, to the commands of the Freedom Volunteer Corps, combined the establishment of organs of popular power to regulate the administration of the life of local communities,” he explained. It was so here in Carnia, where women were protagonists for the first time in voting, expressed in the assemblies of heads of families, and in the organization of the fulfillment of the needs of the population, with the “bearers” who, exhuming the experience of the First World War, were able to enable the survival of the population during the siege, – added the head of state. After all, characteristic of the partisan movement was precisely the call for initiative and participation from below, after two decades of popular subalternity and passivity, the result of the application of the fascist precept ‘believe, obey, fight.'””The political choice to give life to the Partisan Republics expressed a stage of maturity of the experience of the Resistance, as well as corresponding to an assessment of the course of the war, with the anticipation of the future democratic experience.Resistance historiography has called Carnia a ‘laboratory of democracy,'” Mattarella stressed.”In public opinion after Sept. 8, 1943, there was also ‘wait-and-see,’ the belief that it was better not to expose oneself to Nazi-Fascist reprisals and wait for the Allies to move up the peninsula,” Mattarella pointed out. “All this did not take into account the suffering imposed on the population by the occupying forces, the abuse of power, the deportations. It was the Resistance who rose up, obeying Giuseppe Mazzini’s admonition, ‘more than servitude I fear the freedom given as a gift.'””Because the Resistance was not immobility. It was a tough challenge and the fallen of this land, honored by the Republic with the Silver Medal for Military Valor, are its price,” the head of state added. “Italy is proud of the path taken in these almost 80 years since the Liberation,” Mattarella said again. “Today, as the regional president of the ANPI, Lestani, pointed out, history and memory meet. With the contradictions and suffering that accompany the war events. And our country’s vocation for peace is a sign that all this has not passed in vain. Today the Republic, here in Friuli, recognizes in these people, in Carnia, roots of our Constitution, which nourish our democratic life. Thank you for what has been handed down today,” the head of state concluded.
– Quirinal press office photo –
(ITALPRESS).
