Genoa – A young man of perhaps twenty posing on a beach, handsome as a movie star. A girl who can be her age in a bathing suit. Then, a group of uniformed conscripts appears, leaving on a military train. War photos and love letters, rediscovered after eighty years, return from the past and connect to each other like faded frames of an old celluloid film. The story of two lovers of another century, Marco Dino and Rina, thus picking up where it left off, in 1944, cut short in blood.
In Genoa the name of the partisan Marco Dino Rossi “Fire”, born in 1922gold medal in memory for the Resistance, is linked to the public gardens of Castelletto which are dedicated to him, just as in Rome a street in the seventh Municipality has been named after him and in Montalto Carpasio (the family’s town of origin) a clearing on the main road.
In the volumes of the history of the Resistance, on the other hand, he is a presence summarized in a few biographical notes: a beardless face captured by a faded passport photo illustrates the references to guerrilla actions and the tragic end which, after the war, will earn him the highest posthumous honor of the State Italian.
Just under eighty years after his tragic death by firing squad, preceded by torture to convince him in vain to betray his comrades, the partisan “Fuoco” emerges from the inner pages of the books for specialists and takes on the appearance of a twenty-year-old with his feelings, emotions and hopes.
The war hero and martyr returns to being the boy who, at the end of the 1930s, was an explosion of life. And he comes back to talk through photographs and letters found by chance in a country house in Montalto Carpasio, lovingly kept in the bedroom of a woman, Rina, who was young like him while the war was shaking Europe. Kids of a generation called to grow up too fast.
The official story Until yesterday, only a couple of passport size photos remained of the partisan commander Rossi. The one on the tombstone, in the camp of the Martyrs of the Resistance in Staglieno, shows a face little more than an adolescent, with blond hair and light eyes.
Who was Marco Dino Rossi? The few biographical notes reported in the motivation of the honor mark the beginning and the end of a life: born in Genoa in 1922, shot in Sanremo on 10 September 1944. Two known addresses: first via Trieste 9 and then piazza Corridoni 10. The official document reads: “Medical student, at the time of the armistice he was an artillery complement officer: he immediately decided to join the Resistance and joined the partisans of the II Garibaldi Division “Felice Cascione” operating in Liguria”. The indications of the military curriculum in the partisan troops follow: “Rossi, who had distinguished himself in guerrilla actions in Castel Vittorio and Pigna, was appointed chief of staff of the formation.
In August 1944, the young officer who had taken on the battle name “Fire” was charged with carrying out a mission to France, to ascertain whether the Allies had succeeded in taking Menton. On 18 August, from Pigna he headed towards the coast by bicycle, but at the Bonda bridge he was captured by the Germans and transported to Sanremo”.
And the official story turns towards its tragic epilogue: “The SS locked him up in their base in Palazzo Devachan and for days and days subjected him to all kinds of torture, but even the promise to spare his life did not help to obtain information from Rossi on partisan units. Sentenced to death, the young man was brought before the firing squad. He fell shouting: “Long live Italy!”
The love story
Great history rarely lets the faces and personalities of its actors emerge. And in the rhetoric of the honors there are details that are difficult to prove or refute. Like the cry “Long live Italy”. But today, in the year that marks the 80th anniversary of the 1943 armistice, a story of dignity and love re-emerges from that Italy at war. AND the protagonists take shape and live again. The teenager in the photo on a grave becomes a man.
Here he is, the boy born in the 1920s who smokes a cigarette with the air of a movie star, stands bare-chested on a beach, reappears in the uniform of a soldier of the Kingdom of Italy, departing on a train with his fellow soldiers. And, together with those photos, other images of a girl like him or perhaps a little younger who finds an identity in the letters: Catterina (with two “t”) or Rinetta, in the headers of the envelopes, “Rinettin” in the text of the letters more intimate.
The two lovers never appear together but converse through rediscovered writings and black and white shots. He in the sun in his bathing suit and she rowing and smiling; then she in an elegant dress in a three-quarter pose and he among other boys in uniform huddled around an artillery piece.
After September 8, Marco Dino Rossi makes his choice and takes the mountain road, with no more symbols of the royal army. In the Imperia area (for the geography designed by the Liberation Committee it is the “I Zone Liguria”) the formations are all classified in the “II Garibaldi Division” named after Felice Cascione, doctor and partisan member of the PCI, gold medal, author of “The Wind Whistles”.
But not everyone who is called a rebel is a communist. Of course, in the exchange of letters between the two boyfriends there is no mention of parties or patriotic rhetoric. She, who works as a teacher, has been displaced in the countryside and confides her state of mind to him: «Dear Marco, I’ve settled in Montalto for two days. It’s really true that you always fall where you don’t want to. Imagine, I have the first, fourth and fifth class: 40 students in all. Of 40, only 9 have attended classes so far. I notified the director and the principal, but as for the latter…».
He tries to reassure: «Beautiful Rinetta, your Marco is always close to you. He thinks I’ve never cut my beard again, I look like a mulatto but I’m still the usual Marco. My post and my garrison are more secure than ever, my superior is very satisfied. Do not worry about me as I am far from danger.’ Then, on the already sealed envelope, he adds a last request in pencil: «Remember to have that pair of canvas trousers made for me as a matter of urgency».
The reality is that every day in the mountains you risk your life and Marco Dino Rossi, who became commander of “Fuoco”, takes on ever greater responsibilities and risks. The last letter is dated “Comando di Brigata, 22 August 1944”, i.e. four days after the arrest by the Nazi-fascists. «Rinetta dear I’m fine and I hope to see you soon, I’m leaving for an important mission. If I don’t come back don’t cry, I am and will always be close to you, I greet you and I kiss you». Then the signature: «Yours forever, Marco». And a post scriptum that lets us glimpse the future: “Keep everything that is mine”.
The story of Marco Dino Rossi has freely inspired a novel: “Mino and Rina”, De Ferrari Editore, set in the imaginary but not too much Monsanto village: the presentation will be in Genoa on Tuesday 18 April at 5 pm in the church of Santi Cosma e Damiano, organized by the San Paolo bookshop, with the presentation of the journalist Francesca Forleo and the historian Silvio Ferrari.
On this occasion, the re-edition of a book will be presented, between history and family memory, which is the testimony of a forgotten massacre that took place in the same days in Valle Argentina, in the Imperia area, and of the killing of two priests who had physically opposed the weapons of the Nazi-fascists to defend a group of orphans they had in custody at the sanctuary of Acquasanta: “I bambini no”, by Giovanni Perotto. Then the double presentation will be repeated on April 25 in Montalto Carpasio.
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