April 25: because the Resistance is plural, and belongs to everyone | Aldo Cazzullo

On April 25, the partisans descended from the mountains towards the big cities of the North. But they are not alone in objecting to the Nazis.

In the German camps, six hundred thousand deportees await liberation: they refused to fight for Hitler, and saw 40,000 fellow soldiers die of hunger and hardship. Among them are the fathers of Francesco Guccini, Al Bano Carrisi, Antonio Di Pietro, Vasco Rossi. There is Giovanni Guareschi, who wrote in his diary: I’m staying here and I won’t die even if they kill me. And there is Alessandro Natta, future head of the Communist Party, who will name his prison memoirs The other resistance.

A nun, Sister Enrichetta Alfieri, former mother superior of the prison, is locked up in San Vittore, guilty of having sent out messages from the prisoners, and even some prisoners in the flesh. At the beatification process one of those prisoners, Indro Montanelli, said: Certain feats can only be accomplished by saints or heroes. Sister Enrichetta was both.

In the ghetto of Rome is returning home from Bergen-Belsen Settimia Spizzichino, one of sixteen survivors of the raid that devastated the oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora.

In Bari Lieutenant Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa enters effective permanent service in the Carabinieri for war merits: he acted as a link between the Allies and the partisans, escaped the Nazi roundup and passed the lines to rejoin the king, to whom the Carabinieri had remained faithful at the price of thousands of deportees and fallen.

The battle group Legnano, having broken through the Gothic Line alongside the Fifth Army, it descends into the Po valley and closes German units in a pocket.

Don Bartolomeo Ferrari, military chaplain, enters Genoa with the 350 men of the Mingo division, which bears the battle name of a fallen partisan: Don Bartolomeo wearing the tunic and the tricolor handkerchief, climbed the mountains after 8 September at the suggestion of the head of the Catholic network that helps Jews and anti-fascists: Giuseppe Siri, future point of reference for the right wing of the Italian Church. In Florence, the network organized by Archbishop Elia Dalla Costa, who sent a trusted man on a bicycle to bring false documents to save the Jews hidden in the convent of Assisi: the very Catholic Gino Bartali.

The idea of ​​the Resistance as a red thing, a matter between fascists and communists, a sensational fake. possible that in the past it served the left to monopolize the war of Liberation, and now it serves the right to give an ideological coloring to anti-fascism, which in any country in the world considered a common value on which there is no need to discuss even for a minute. Unfortunately we have not done anything else for thirty years.

It hasn’t always been like this. For the DC, celebrating April 25 was obvious: the founder of ENI Enrico Mattei Marconi, the Minister of the Interior Paolo Emilio Taviani Pittaluga, the Minister of Agriculture Giovanni Marcora Albertino had been partisan leaders; the mild-mannered Mariano Rumor had represented the party in the Veneto Cln, in whose ranks Luigi Gui and Tina Anselmi had fought, while in the Canavese the Minister of Labor Carlo Donat-Cattin had fought; the leader Alcide De Gasperi had been in fascist prisons; one of the leaders of the Catholic university federation, Ignazio Vian, had been hung from a tree in the center of Turin.

The Plural Resistance. It should be the moral homeland of all Italians. Among the partisans were men and women of every political faith; the first were army officers and alpine veterans from Russia; the majority were boys of twenty and even younger, who didn’t even know what a party was, but disobeyed Graziani’s calls and refused to fight for Hitler and Mussolini.

The no to Nazi-fascism was not said only by the partisans, but by religious, military, Jews, civilians, women, carabinieri, peasants, internees in Germany. Always at risk, sometimes at the cost of living.

Then of course the Resistance has had its black pages, which have been talked about too little for too long. wrong to hide them, those too must be told, from Porzs to Codevigo. But nothing can erase the fact that in that civil war there was a right side, which fought against the Nazis who brought Italian Jews to Auschwitz, and a wrong side, which fought alongside them. Of course, even among the vanquished there were boys who believed in good faith that they were serving their country, and they too died shouting long live Italy. But going to Sal was not a free choice: it was an obligation, the violation of which was punished with death. The boys shot by the Carit gang in Campo di Marte in Florence, or hanged from the trees of Viale di Bassano, were draft dodgers.

In Milan, April 25th is the day when fascists and Germans negotiate to save their skins. Benito Mussolini arrived from Lake Garda a few days ago. The leader is now in a state of confusion. Now he thinks of handing himself over to the Allies, now he dreams of agreements with the socialists, whom he has been pursuing for over twenty-five years; fantasize about resisting Milan, Italy’s Stalingrad, or perhaps teaming up with a troop of loyalists in the Valtellina redoubt. The last hierarchs promise him 50,000 men; they find 400. Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster invites him to the archbishopric to negotiate and asks him to repent of his sins; Mussolini resents it. He is offered protection; he refuses, and meets his fate.

In Turin, April 25 begins with a coded message from the Military Committee of Piedmont: Aldo says 26 x 1 stop Enemy in final crisis stop…. the expected signal for insurrection. The plan was to save the factories, get ahead of the Anglo-Americans, not let the Germans leave undisturbed. However, the Germans have orders to resist, to cover the retreat of the troops coming up from Liguria.

Colonel Stevens, representative of the Anglo-American forces in Piedmont, communicates that the insurrection must be postponed: the Nazis are too many, 35,000 with artillery and tanks. But already on the night of April 25 the occupation of the factories began. The workers bar the gates, put up barricades. Hidden weapons appear, often with the complicity of corporate management; machine guns are placed. On the 26th the firefights begin, on the 27th they intensify. The partisans occupy the Fiat Mirafiori and join the workers. The command is established in Borgo San Paolo, the village of smoke, at Lancia, on which the tricolor is hoisted. On the morning of the 28th the bulk of the partisans entered the city; the Allies will find the trams running, the workshops at work.

The communist Giorgio Amendola he announces in the Mirafiori canteen that the head of Fiat Vittorio Valletta sentenced to death; the Americans let it be known that they don’t even talk about it, Valletta is their man to revive Italian industry.

In those days, from the women’s prison of Aichach, in Upper Bavaria, an anti-fascist prisoner, Anna Enrica Filippini Lera, wrote to her father. Her boyfriend who fought with the Allies is coming to look for her in an English jeep, he will find her, bring her home, marry her; but she still can’t know it. From her Her letter is full of energy, trust, optimism: My darling dear, we will be back soon and I will be able to resume my work. There will be work in Italy anyway, but that doesn’t scare us. We will work and rebuild our lives and there will be no greater joy. We are young and we do not lack enthusiasm.

There Reconstruction it had begun.