Berlusconi’s speech to Onna

We republish the complete speech by Silvio Berlusconi on the occasion of the Liberation Day 2009 in Onna (AQ), 19 days after the earthquake that struck L’Aquila and neighboring countries

Dear friends, it’s not easy to find the words to describe my, our state of mind right now. We are here in Onna to celebrate Liberation Day, a celebration that is both an honor and a commitment. An honor: to commemorate a terrible massacre perpetrated right here in June 1944 when the Nazis massacred 17 citizens of Onna in retaliation, and then blew up the house in which the bodies of those innocent victims were found with explosives. A commitment: which must inspire us is not to forget what happened here and to remember the horrors of totalitarianism and the suppression of “freedom”. Right here, right in Abruzzo, the legendary Maiella Brigade was born and operated, which was decorated with the Gold Medal for Military Valor. In December 1943, 15 young men founded what was to become the Maiella Brigade, which grew to 1,500 men strong. It is no coincidence that on this special day, the soldiers of the Guard of Honor lined up in front of us belong to the 33rd Artillery Regiment, the Abruzzo unit which in 1943 in Kefalonia had the courage to oppose the Nazis and to sacrifice itself – fighting – for the honor of our country. Our admiration, our gratitude, our recognition must always go to those patriots who fought for the redemption and rebirth of Italy. Most Italians today have not experienced what the deprivation of liberty means. Only the older ones have a direct memory of totalitarianism, of foreign occupation, of the war for the liberation of our Motherland.

For many of us it is a memory linked to our families, our parents, our grandparents, many of whom were protagonists or even victims of those dramatic days. For me it is the memory of years away from my father, forced to leave the country to avoid being arrested, it is the memory of the sacrifices of my mother, who alone had to support a large family in those difficult years. It is the memory of her courage, of her who, like so many others from a small town in the province of Como, had to travel to Milan by train every day to work, and who one day, on one of those trains, risked her life, but managed to steal a Jewish woman destined for the extermination camps from a Nazi soldier. These are the memories, they are the examples we grew up with. Those of a generation of Italians who did not hesitate to choose freedom. Even at the risk of one’s safety, even at the risk of one’s life. Our country owes an inextinguishable debt to those many young people who sacrificed their lives, in the best years, to redeem the honor of their country, out of loyalty to an oath, but above all for that great, splendid, indispensable value which is freedom. We owe the same debt of gratitude to all those other boys, American, English, French, Polish, from the many allied countries, who shed their blood in the Italian campaign. Without them, the sacrifice of our partisans would have risked being in vain. And we must respectfully remember all the fallen today, even those who fought on the wrong side, sacrificing their lives in good faith for their ideals and a cause already lost. Of course this does not mean neutrality or indifference. We are – all free Italians are – on the side of those who fought for our freedom, for our dignity and for the honor of our country.

In recent years the history of the Resistance has been deepened and discussed. It’s good that it happened. The Resistance is – with the Risorgimento – one of the founding values ​​of our nation, a return to the tradition of freedom. And freedom is a right that comes before the laws and the state, because it is a natural right that belongs to us as human beings. A free nation however does not need myths. As with the Risorgimento, it is also necessary to remember the dark pages of the civil war, even those in which those who fought on the right side made mistakes and assumed guilt. It is an exercise of truth, it is an exercise of honesty, an exercise which makes the history of those who instead fought on the right side with self-sacrifice and courage even more glorious. It is the story of the many who fought in the army of the South, who from Kefalonia onwards redeemed the honor of the uniform with blood. It is the story of martyrs such as Salvo D’Acquisto who did not hesitate to sacrifice his life in exchange for other innocent lives. It is the story of our soldiers interned in Germany, who chose the concentration camp rather than collaborate with the Nazis. It is the story of the many who hid wanted Jewish fellow citizens, saving them from deportation. It is above all the story of the many, many unknown heroes who, with small or large gestures of daily courage, collaborated in the cause of freedom.

Even the Church, I want to remind you, did its part with true courage, to prevent hateful concepts, such as race or religious differences, from becoming a reason for persecution and death for many. In the same way we must remember the young Jews of the Jewish Brigade, who arrived from the ghettos of all Europe, who took up arms and fought for freedom. At that moment many Italians of different faiths, of different cultures, of different backgrounds came together to follow the same great dream, that of freedom. There were very different people and groups among them. There were those who thought only of freedom, those who dreamed of establishing a different social and political order, those who considered themselves bound by an oath of loyalty to the monarchy.

But everyone knew how to set aside their differences, even the deepest ones, to fight together. Communists and Catholics, socialists and liberals, shareholders and monarchists, faced with a common drama, wrote, each for their part, a great page in our history. A page on which our Constitution is based, on which our freedom is based. It was in the drafting of the Constitution that the wisdom of the political leaders of the time, De Gasperi and Togliatti, Ruini and Terracini, Nenni, Pacciardi and Parri, succeeded in channeling the profound initial divergences towards a single objective. Although the obvious result of compromises, the republican constitution managed to achieve two noble and fundamental objectives: guaranteeing freedom and creating the conditions for a democratic development of the country. It wasn’t much. Indeed, it was the best compromise possible at the time. However, the objective of creating a “common” moral conscience of the nation was missed, perhaps a premature objective for those times, so much so that the prevailing value was anti-fascism for all, but not anti-totalitarianism for all. It was the result of history, a compromise useful to prevent the Cold War that vertically divided Italy from leading to a civil war with unpredictable outcomes. But the assumption of responsibility and the sense of the state that animated all the political leaders of the time remain a great lesson that it would be unforgivable to forget. Today, 64 years after April 25, 1945 and twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, our task, everyone’s task, is to finally build a unified national sentiment.

We must do it all together, all together, whatever the political affiliation, all together, for a new beginning of our republican democracy, where all the political parties recognize each other in the greatest value, freedom, and in its name confront each other for the good and in the interest of all. The anniversary of the reconquest of freedom is therefore an opportunity to reflect on the past, but also to reflect on Italy’s present and future. If from today we manage to do it together, we will have rendered a great service not to one political party or the other, but to the Italian people and, above all, to our children who have the right to live in a democracy that has finally been pacified. We have always rejected the thesis that our adversary is our enemy. He imposed it on us and our religion of freedom imposes it on us. In the same spirit, I am convinced that the time has come for Liberation Day to become a Freedom Day, and to remove from this anniversary the character of opposition that revolutionary culture has given it and which still “divides” rather than “unites” ”. I say this with great serenity, without any polemical intention. April 25 was the origin of a new season of democracy and in a democracy the vote of the people deserves absolute respect from all. After April 25, the people peacefully voted for the Republic, and the monarchy accepted the popular opinion. Shortly afterwards, on 18 April 1948, the popular choice was once again decisive for our country: with De Gasperi’s victory, the Italian people recognized themselves in the Christian and liberal tradition of their history. And the Fifties, always with the support of the popular vote, shaped Italy as a democratic, economic and social reality. Italy became part of Europe and of the West, it was one of the promoters of Atlantic unity and European unity, it changed from a rejected country to a respected country.

Today our young people have other challenges ahead of them: to defend the freedom conquered by their fathers and to expand it ever more, aware as they are that without freedom there can be no peace, no justice, no well-being. Some of these challenges are planetary and see us engaged alongside free countries: the fight against terrorism, the fight against fanatical and liberticidal fundamentalism, the fight against racism, because freedom, dignity and peace are a right of every human being, “everywhere” in the world. That’s why I want to remember the Italian soldiers engaged in peacekeeping missions abroad, and in particular all those who died in carrying out this noble mission. There is an ideal continuity between them and all the heroes, Italians and allies, who sacrificed their lives more than 60 years ago to give us freedom in security and peace.

Today that teaching of our fathers takes on a particular value: this 25th April falls the day after the great tragedy that struck this land of Abruzzo. Once again, faced with the emergency and the tragedy, the Italians have been able to unite, have been able to overcome differences, have managed to demonstrate that they are a great people united in generosity, solidarity and courage. Looking at the many Italians who have engaged here in the rescue and reconstruction work, I feel proud, once again, even more, to be Italian and to lead this wonderful country. Today Onna is for us the symbol of our Italy. The earthquake that destroyed it reminds us of the days when it was the invader who destroyed it. Rebuilding it will mean repeating the gesture of its rebirth after the Nazi violence. And it is precisely towards the heroes of then and today that we all have a great responsibility: to put aside any controversy, to look to the nation’s interest, to protect the great patrimony of freedom that we have inherited from our fathers. Together, we have the responsibility and duty to build a future of prosperity, security, peace and freedom for all. Long live Italy! Long live the Republic! Long live April 25, the feast of all Italians, who love freedom and want to remain free! Long live the feast of regained freedom on April 25!