President Mattarella, “Italian Constitution born where partisans fell”

“If you want to go on pilgrimage to the place where our Constitution was born, go to the mountains where partisans fell, to the prisons where they were imprisoned, to the camps where they were hanged”. This is the appeal launched by Italian President Sergio Mattarella in celebrating Italy’s Liberation Day during a ceremony in Cuneo, citing one of the Fundamental Charter’s founding fathers, anti-Fascist intellectual and politician Piero Calamandrei. On 25 April he sent a strong message to the country stressing the importance of keeping alive the memory of the past.
“Wherever an Italian died to redeem freedom and dignity: go there, o young people, with your thoughts, because there our Constitution was born,” said the Head of State using words originally addressed to students in Milan in 1955.
25 April 1945, as the UCEI President Noemi Di Segni remarked in commemorating the anniversary in Milan, “was the feast of regained freedom, of the possibility of moving freely, of breathing in the sunlight, of thinking that the fascists had disappeared forever”. “We are well aware of how this day of celebration was politically framed in the first decades of the post-war period and how today the challenge is to overcome any division concerning historical events and the reasons that must inspire the celebration of such deeply identifying values”. However, she continued, “in today’s political context – the imperative is awareness” against any form of nostalgia and intolerance.
From Milan to Naples, many initiatives took place in Italy to celebrate the Jewish contribution to the Resistance and Liberation. In Verona, the memory of the Trieste partisan Rita Rosani, killed on Monte Comun and awarded the gold medal for military valor, was honored in a ceremony at the synagogue. A plaque was placed on the building commemorating her commitment to defending the “highest ideals of humanity”.
In Trieste, civil and religious authorities took part in a ceremony in the concentration camp Risiera di San Sabba with the laying of a wreath near the building meant for eliminating Jews, and civilian and military prisoners. In closing, the concert by the Trieste partisan choir Pinko Tomažič.
As per tradition, the procession of April 25 ended in Venice in the Ghetto, with a ceremony that saw the participation of the mayor Luigi Brugnaro, the prefect Michele Di Bari and other authorities. “Those who don’t know or don’t want to know what fascism was, come to this Ghetto and we will explain it to them. We’ll have them read the names, one by one, and tell them their stories. May they come to this camp to claim the innocence and the beautiful republican ideal of the assassins”, was the message of President of the Jewish Community Dario Calimani.

From top, the banner of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities at the commemorative event in Milan; a tribute to the Jewish Brigade in Livorno; the ceremony in Trieste ((Photo Montenero).