ALESSANDRIA – Today and tomorrow Alexandria remember the 50th anniversary of the tragic riot in prisonorganized by three inmates on 9 and 10 May 1974. Five hostages were killed: the guards Sebastiano Gaeta and Gennaro Cantiellothe doctor Roberto Gandolfi, the professor Pier Luigi Campi and the social worker Graziella Vassallo Giarola. Two prisoners also died: Cesare Concu and Domenico Di Bona.
Radio Gold interviewed Giuseppina and Luigi Gaeta, sons of Brigadier Sebastiano Gaeta. “I never go near prison” said Giuseppina “50 years have passed since that day that changed our lives. For me it’s like it was yesterday. I saw him for the last time at 6am on May 9th. I was 16 and I got up early to study”. “However, when I pass in front of the prison now named after my father, I stop in front of the plaque” the words of Luigi Gaeta “I was 13 years old. I remember those chaotic days, the waiting and the hope that everything could end well.”. Agent Gaeta was then awarded the silver medal for Military Valor which, initially, the widow Raffaella Bentivegna rejection: “They also assigned it to some colleagues who were injured. Instead he had lost his life. Five years ago, however, we asked to have it back, before our mother died”. Gaeta died on May 10, following the blitz of the police: “That Sunday the referendum on divorce was supposed to be voted on. They said everything had to be done quickly. Furthermore, in that same period, the magistrate was kidnapped in Genoa by the Red Brigades Mario Sossi. The State, in all probability, considered that it was not necessary to give in. I wonder how it was possible to hypothesize an action of force inside a prison. And then we still don’t know who brought the weapons or if there were any accomplices. It is important to remember: above all the fact that young generations can be informed about what happened, in the hope that such a catastrophic event can never happen again.”
Two, in particular, are the initiatives promoted in the city: last Saturday it was inaugurated at the Galleria Guasco in via dei Guasco, 49, a documentary exhibition while this Thursday and Friday at Palatium Vetus, in Piazza della Libertà 28, there will be a conference fruit of the collaboration between the city of Alessandria, the National and Regional Order of Piedmont and the Foundation of Social Workers, the Institute for the history of resistance and contemporary society in the province of Alessandria “Carlo Gilardenghi”, Cissaca and the Special Multiservice Company Building Together.
Furthermore, from Friday the docuseries “Forgotten Memory“, made by LaV Communication, the production company of Diocese of Alexandria.
To know more:
