After July 25, 1943 - the date of the fall of fascism - the release of political prisoners who were on that day on the island of Ventotene began just over two weeks after the Badoglio government, referring to the traditions of Italy and the bourgeois monarchy, began the liberation of anti-fascists beginning, in the order of precedence, from moderates until giellisti, Republicans, Socialists and Communists.
Consistent with the contacts and commitments with the various parliamentary parties of the deployment of traditional anarchists, except the liberation front of the progressive advance in the south of the Anglo-American armies - instead we were transferred to the concentration camp Renicci of Anghiari in the province of Arezzo .
With us were also excluded from the liberation of the Yugoslav and Albanian communists and nationalists, and some anti-fascist Italians. Around the 20th of August we embarked on a corvette of the Royal Navy not equipped to rescue hundreds of people in the case of a probable attack submarines. When the ship left the port of Ventotene before you turn to Gaeta, repeatedly shouted our greetings to Comrade Gino Lucetti prisoner in life sentence on the island of Santo Stefano.
After a few hours of rest in Gaeta, where we had the first greetings from fellow Salvatore Vella, his children and his wife, began our journey to the camp. We were escorted by carabinieri and agents of the PS.
We were not handcuffed so that was easy to several friends including Girolimetti brothers, Giorlando, etc. to escape. In all stations improvised speeches, looking out the window, urging the radical struggle against fascism and Nazism. In Rome, our train was tossed from one station to another, it was said to protect us from aerial bombardment, but in reality to prevent our contacts with fellow Romans and our protests for failure to release us.
I remember with regret an attempt to escape from my partner Arturo Messina failed for a chance meeting with a group of guardians who were part of our station after being temporarily removed. Throughout the trip, stopping in various stations of our invitations to the fight against fascism and indecision met the amazement of the people. Arezzo was noticed that a common understanding and sympathetic solidarity by hundreds of people who were in that station. It was here that we saw for the last time mate Zambonini. He had been a strong and militant wounded in the war with Spain and host with us on the island of Ventotene during the Second World War.
“Shoot cowards!”
At departure from Ventotene, in the face of our protests to the failure to release we had been promised that we would be freed in the following days on land. Comrade Zambonini at the Arezzo station refused to go to camp, so he was taken to prison. Later, during the resistance, he will be shot by the fascists in the polygon of Reggio Emilia.
Arrived at twilight, at the station of Anghiari we were received by hundreds of policemen and soldiers to whom we heard distinctly by their officers to address the order to load their weapons. Protested vigorously.
In an altercation with the officers that insolent threatening shootings, the comrades Arturo Messina and Marcello Bianconi shouted: "Shoot coward. " So they were taken directly in the security cell. Thus began our agitation against the regime inside the camp.
This had been until then one of the worst kind. The prisoners were mostly Yugoslav partisans, and with them were hundreds of underage boys and a few years. The diet was increasingly scarce and poor, hundreds of inmates, especially children and young people had died because of bad treatment. In return, the surveillance was fierce and brutal. Hundreds of soldiers and policemen watched the prisoners, set out, the latter from Tuscany and neighboring regions. The second in command, maggiore Fiorenzuola, and Lieutenant Panzacchi stood out for their arbitrariness. It was forbidden even to the inmates of the various sections in which the camp had been divided to approach the wire mesh partition to talk to each other. The morning after our arrival our captors made a show of force. The threats of the officers addressed to us with the deployment of armed guard following the arrest of fellow Bianconi and Messina wanted to achieve in order to intimidate us and make us at their mercy. We constituted, together with fellow veterans from battles fought in exile in Spain, the group tested by the struggles in prison and exile which had cost us more to prison sentences and additional confinement, as well as the lives of many comrades, to defend our human dignity by the officials of the Fascist militia and police. And the smell of dust was a major incentive for us not to give up the fight began against the torturers of the concentration camp of Renicci of Anghiari. We demanded freedom of communication between prisoners of different sectors, especially the cessation of arbitrariness committed by Lieutenant Panzacchi assisted by soldiers as he openly fascist. Between us and the return of fellow Bianconi and Messina. After several days of fierce skirmishes the camp commander, Colonel Pistone, decided to remove the ban on inter-communication between prisoners and to the children of various radii was doubled the ration that consisted of a few hundred grams of bread and a little soup alternatively carrot or unpeeled potatoes and water pumped directly from the underlying Tiber river, which caused outbreaks of dysentery and colitis.
Our relationships with the custodians risk of bringing a tragic failure. They insisted that we call the morning had aligned militarily and that one of us, according to captain, he'd counted and submitted to the officer's inspection.
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Emilio Canzi
(photo: archive ANPI Piacenza) |
International solidarity
We continued for several days to refuse. The nervousness among the officers, especially, was the climax. Comrade Emilio Canzi, when we were getting shocks, intervened. He begged us not to formalize and he assumed the thankless task. So there truly the best and officers for their part, accepted the compromise. But the eyes of Emilio Canzi, in the presenting us without formalities to the officer exceeded the morality height much more than its already high physical stature allowed him.
Someone among us, chewing on bitter "inconsistency" of Emilio Canzi who had already in mind the establishment of the first partisan groups that in his native Piacenza area, at the end of the war, were a group of around ten thousand men. The thousands of Yugoslav partisans who populated the camp, communist or nationalist, had until then known as Italians fascists and torturers, and therefore were motivated by deep chauvinist antiitalian hatred although they were formally observant of discipline to the point that seemed to appear every morning, a department the same forces that held us captive.
Our demonstration of international solidarity, which they did not request, printed a new spirit in their behavior and Italy from that moment was no longer only the birthplace of fascism that oppressed them but also of men in the international struggle for the freedom of peoples. This internationalist spirit rose from the hearts and songs mingled in the blood of two prisoners, a slave and an Italian anarchist, on the evening of September 9, 1943. That day we learned that fascism with the help of Hitler had rebuilt a Mussolini in the Italian north central government. We realized it boldly for the preparation of officers and soldiers who took up the fascists over at the moderate control. In all sections of the camp Yugoslav prisoners that we saw every morning proved to be a disciplined military formations already prepared. Rallies that were held in all sections of the military command demanded arms to march against the Nazis. In our section, the word had a vibrant Ganu Kriezju Albanian chiefs of the three brothers who shared with us in internment at Ventotene. At that moment I heard the handset of the call he called the armed guard, of course. I did not doubt that it would direct the first section and elsewhere in our hatred for the Fascists resentment against anarchists, recent arrivals. So I went to see what the entry was going to happen in time to hear clearly the order given by the highest men of Fiorenzuola rod loaded with blanks and shoot immediately after giving notice to the internees curtly ordered to dissolve the meeting and retreat in the dormitories. Not all the inmates had time to realize what was happening. Immediately after firing the first shots of the armed guard's orders were followed Fiorenzuola circular cross-machine guns placed on the guard towers that surrounded the field.
apparently unarmed silence
Before closing this modest memory of the many comrades who then left their lives in the struggle against fascism or hardship in derivatives contracts from the evils in the galleys and the islands of the fascist regime of confinement, I recall the greatness of a man of commanding officer of Renicci Anghiari. He had over forty of us to lead us to the prefecture of Arezzo where we should have been released.
In the trip we did observe that Arezzo was already back in the hands of the fascists and the Germans and leading us there amounted to result in death.
That officer, in the daily discussions that we had with him proved of fascist ideals, however, he was alien to arbitrary acts like those that were dear to lieutenant Panzacchi, his colleague. At our insistence, arrived in S. Florence a few kilometers before Arezzo he sent down from the truck and called on the sidelines me and Mario Perelli, gave us a list of our group and told me: "You are responsible for these men! Then spun the truck and returned with the soldiers of the escort to the camp. He was Lieutenant Rouep, Florence, came from the alpini.
Perelli and I burned the paper. That group of friends split up and each went in different directions to all the roads that resemble living and dead, their presence in the true story of the fight for freedom. History must always be "done" before the others, those who tend to write and fix arbitrarily the facts of history, can write the "history" that have "made it."
And this is a subject that may also be valid in relation to the incidents that I mentioned. And the many others who remain to remember.
anno
40 n. 357
Alfonso Failla