Who is Paola Del Din, the partisan “patriot” mentioned by Meloni for April 25th

“Her courage earned her a gold medal for military valor, which she still wears on her chest with touching pride, almost seventy years after receiving it”. Giorgia Meloni, in her first April 25 at the helm of the government, chose to tell the life of Paola Del Din to commemorate freedom from fascism, placing it at the center of his long letter sent to Corriere della Sera. A “mother” of the people, in the words of the prime minister, of all those who prefer love for Italy to “ideological opposition”. Behind the personal memory evoked by Giorgia Meloni, there is a woman able to abandon everything and everyone and make herself available to the Resistance. One of the many stories that are brought to light today, rewinding the thread of memory and thus recovering the meaning of a celebration.

If you try to attribute an adjective to Paola Del Din, you will soon fall into error. Because she herself – as Giorgia Meloni also explains in her letter – has always preferred the single epithet of “patriot” to each subsequent definition. “We have always defined ourselves as patriots because the partisan, the word itself says, fights for a part, while we fought for all Italians, including those of the opposing side, to end everyone’s suffering”, he explained his choice. In his case, as in that of many other protagonists of the armed and non-armed struggle, it is the facts that speak more than the words. Facts that led a young Venetian girl to become an intermediary for Great Britain and to parachute into Friuli together with two other agents.

Paola Del Din was born in Pieve di Cadore, in August one hundred years ago. At the age of ten he moved to Friuli, following his father who became an elder after the First World War. With his brother Renato, he enters in his early twenties to join the Osoppo Brigadeone of the partisan formations born following the armistice of 8 September 1943. She chose “Renata” as her battle name, in honor of her brother, and began her career as an informant.

In the night between 24 and 25 April 1944, his brother Renato was killed during an ambush at the fascist barracks in Tolmezzo. The death of his brother and the escalation of the guerrilla precipitate events: “Renata” asks for more responsibility, “something more, so that he didn’t die in vain”, as she herself said on several occasions. Thus, while she was still a student of Letters, she received the task of transporting a series of classified papers to Florence on behalf of the British services: taking advantage of German means and exploiting as best she could what the road offered her, she delivered the documents, ” without knowing what they contained, as per the safety standard”. The mission is completed.

Fate would offer her an even more unpredictable return. She practicing in Brindisi as a paratrooper, she prepares the operation that must bring her back to Friuli. Several attempts fail. Finally, in April 1945, with two other agents, he flew over Lauzzana, in the province of Udine. “Renata” fractures her vertebrae, but once again the task is completed and she is welcomed back into the house. After months of silence and no news, her mother exclaims: “You are not a girl, you are a devil!”.

A “devil” who has never forgotten the tenacity and perseverance of his twenty years, continuing to offer his testimony to pupils and students in schools, and to anyone who happens upon his unrepeatable story. In his very long life there was no lack of controversy either: the Anpi and the Communist Refoundation disputed some of his statements, on the merits of the intricate Gladio operation. A story that today is reproposed in a book by Alessandro Carlini, “Code name: Renata” (Utet editions), recently presented in Udine in the presence of Paola, in that city that she knows like no other.