Today, April 25th, 81 years ago, Italy rose up against the Nazi occupation and the regime of Benito Mussolini. Partisans across the country took up arms, and Mussolini fled toward Switzerland, but was captured and executed three days later.
This is History — the kind that more or less everyone knows. But woven into that same History are the stories of many partisans, ordinary people, the joy and the suffering of a moment that was not an ending, but a beginning toward democracy.
In the coming days I will publish some of these testimonies, in memory of the Resistance. So we never forget those who fought and suffered for freedom.
Good reading, and happy April 25th.
I was in prison in Albenga when, on April 24th, through the iron bars of my cell, sounds reached my ears for hours — engine noises, murmurs, shouts, orders. I understood that something big was happening. Then there was silence, and an anonymous voice cried out: "The fascists have fled up toward Cisano — let's free the prisoners!"
The creaking of my cell door as it swung open was, in that moment, wonderful music ringing in my ears and above all in my heart. On that spring day, April 24th, I walked out of prison bearing the terrible and indelible marks — both moral and physical — of my time behind bars. I returned to freedom infected with scabies, tormented and anguished in my soul. I left Albenga riding on the crossbar of a friend's bicycle — a fireman — and together with him, the one who had opened my cell, I made my way toward Savona.
After a journey that unfolded amid heavy gunfire, I arrived in Savona, at my home. Inside me there was fear and sadness, because I knew what I would find there — and indeed, my mother was sitting on a chair (I can still see her as if it were today), beyond words, beyond grief, mortally and indelibly wounded by the cruel murder of my dear brother Franco, just 18 years old (he was later posthumously awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valor — ed.). In my home, there was no room to rejoice in the freedom we had won back. […] Through the window, the songs of Liberation reached me, and the air smelled of freedom. That April 25th, I was in spirit in the square — joyful and present — even though in person I was living in an atmosphere of anguish and despair.
Two days later, I began to carry out another sorrowful task: the recovery of the bodies of my fallen comrades.
VANNA VACCANI, partisan fighter from Savona
Patria, 1976
Source: Patria Indipendente