Nobody’s children of the Resistance, orphans even of the first anti-fascism

On the morning of April 25 my wife, Gabriella, who likes crowds and being together much more than I do, especially if there is a band playing, after a few minutes of television with Mattarella in Piazza Venezia for the celebrations, went to look for an old 33 rpm, which I had forgotten, with the songs of the Resistance, from The wind blows to Hello beautiful. Here you are: while our national anthem has always moved me little (and I’m sorry), those songs instead, at least some, give me some thrill. I couldn’t help but think then of my closest and most frequented friend in adulthood, Piergiorgio Bellocchiowhose greatest political regret was not having had the age to be a partisan, in 1943 he was eleven years old. He didn’t tell me much about it, yet he felt that void of experience in himself. His doubts about 1968 were many, despite the fact that from 1962 to 1983 he had founded and directed Quaderni Piacentini, a magazine considered and then remembered as authoritatively guilty of “sixty-eightism”. In his Twentieth century diary released posthumously in May last year, just one month after his death, Piergiorgio often talks about Italian history, fascism and anti-fascism, communism and anti-communism. I limit myself to a page that directly concerns the birth of the Resistance against “Nazi-fascism”, that is, against that fascism that put itself at the service of the Nazi occupation in Italy, of its terrorist massacres of civilians.