Dear President Mattarella, I am writing to you as a citizen even before as a European parliamentarian, since I believe that the representatives of the institutions -at every level- must never forget that they are above all Italian citizens, and that they must honor the Constitution every day, every instant, in every area of their life and not only in the performance of their institutional functions.
I won’t hide from you a certain embarrassment in explaining the reasons of mine to you, an embarrassment overcome however by a very strong urgency, which makes it necessary for me to address you today.
Yesterday, during a radio program, the second office of state, the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa, spoke of a very important episode in our history: the attack on Via Rasella. A dramatic act of war organized by courageous partisans, by men who fought to subtract Italy from the barbarous domination of the fascist dictatorship allied with the deadly German Nazism, a risky act but strongly desired by Italians who with contempt of danger fought one’s life in order to go against an inhuman regime, against discrimination, against the death of mercy and tolerance, against the annulment of ideas and all freedom, against that progressive zeroing of human dignity which was the fascist dictatorship, responsible for deaths, deportations, discrimination, robberies, widespread poverty, intolerable ideas such as racism which became laws of the State, enslavement to Nazism, suppression of pluralism and the free press, and countless other shameful barbarities.
Well, in recalling the events of Via Rasella, the President of the Senate distorted the historical truth by recounting that the victims were “a musical band of pensioners”, and stigmatizing not the unbreathable climate due to the Nazi occupation endorsed by the fascist regime, but those who that horror was opposed: the partisans.
Dearest President, Italy is a democratic republic, as you know very well and as you remind us every day with the perfect interpretation of your mandate, but democracy, this invaluable asset that resistance to fascism has also given us, is as precious as fragile, and cannot do without the exercise of memory. Historical memory is a founding pillar of our Republic, and the more it is widespread, shared and transmitted to young people, the stronger this pillar will be, and therefore our civil coexistence, present and future.
As an Italian, grateful to the partisans for having given us freedom and democracy, I don’t think what is history and not opinion can be the subject of debate, and I don’t think it is healthy for a democracy, for an important country like ours, to be able to falsify our recent history, especially from a position of institutional importance.
The victims of via Rasella were not retired musicians: they were South Tyrolean soldiers in the service of Nazi-fascism, and the oldest of them was 42 years old. This clumsy attempt at penny revisionism on such an important episode, which gave rise to the ferocious retaliation of the Fosse Ardeatine, where 355 innocent people -only because they were anti-fascists, Jews or not aligned with the regime- were mercilessly murdered, would not be acceptable even if it came from a coin columnist, by a customer raving in a bar, by a nobody who has to call a radio program just to vent his frustrations. It is unacceptable in itself: as false and as insulting to those who gave their lives for us, to ensure our freedom, well-being, independence.
But when this aberrant reading is proposed not by an unfortunate passer-by, but by the second office of the state, of that democratic state which is the very son of the partisan resistance, it is not only an unacceptable falsehood, but in my view it represents a serious and dangerous vulnerability , a stain that casts into despair and concern anyone who cares about the future of our beloved nation, and the community of citizens that composes it.
What future will Italy have, dear President, what future will our children and their children have, if a few decades after the end of a dictatorship, not just any ignorant nostalgic for it, but the second office of the state undermines its unity by question our shared history and memory?
To you who are the supreme guarantor of our Constitution, to you who interpret with such clear splendor not only your mandate but your delicate and very important role, to you who are an essential point of reference for all Italians, I very modestly ask for a particular attention so that none of us has to hear from high representatives of the institutions words so misleading, inaccurate, violent in their objective falsehood, and divisive in the most dangerous way: that attempt to divide not today’s Italians, but the very roots that they are all Italian and all democrats, the common roots of our Republic.
President, I know that perhaps there is no need to say this, but I would like to underline that since the free vote of Italians has given the parliamentary right a full mandate to govern the country, it is right and proper that the government in office respects the will of the people and that the right implements the policies it deems right, while the opposition proposes alternatives, as our Constitution provides. But I think it is our primary duty to definitively clear the field of any misunderstanding and any doubt regarding the past and present of this country: right, left and any other free political formation can only refer to the republican Constitution and reject not only any reference to the regime Fascist, not only the apology and reconstruction of Mussolini’s party, but also every possible attempt at revisionism, at rewriting history, at destroying a common and untouchable democratic memory. The vote of the Italians gives the right and the duty to whoever wins the elections to govern, while that vote cannot give anyone the right to overturn the republican form, or to pollute the national spirit, it does not give the right to falsify history nor to minimize the atrocities of a regime that our fathers defeated by often paying with their lives. At least no vote can justify indulgence towards the criminal ideologies that the fascist regime unfortunately embraced, and that so many deaths and pains brought to millions of Italian families, starting from those of the Jewish religion and those of those who had the courage to oppose barbarism and finally – at the price of enormous sacrifices – to bring it down.
Dear President, I hope you will forgive me for stealing your precious time, but I believe that the balance of a splendid and complex country like Italy is very precious, and it is our duty never to shirk the obligation to keep the national community united, respect the our mandate in every detail and not turn away when we fear that the limits of a healthy dialectic will be exceeded.
When we feel the solid ground of shared memory and common roots crumble dangerously under our feet, when the measure appears full, dear President, it becomes a moral obligation to address you, your person and your mandate, your human, moral and political stature , to your personal and family history, to your wisdom, and to the attention you have always shown towards national unity and those republican values that no joke can and will ever question, and which must indeed be protected and transmitted clearly to the new generations: primarily by those who have important roles in those democratic institutions that the victorious battle against the dictatorship has given us.
I greet you and thank you with respectful gratitude,
Dino Giarrusso, Member of the European Parliament.
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