MACERATA – It will be presented at the XXXVI edition of the Turin Book Fair, scheduled for next May 9th to 13th, “My prisons. Feeling of what I was”the book that Giacomo Berdini published using his father’s diaries, According to Berdiniwhich tell of his period of imprisonment, as a soldier accused of treason, deported from Greece to concentration and labor camps in Germany, after fighting in Albania.
The diaries were left as written by Secondo Berdini, without spelling or grammatical corrections, to give strength to the story of that difficult period. Giacomo Berdini, historic businessman from Macerata, has a thought for those who allowed all this: «I would not have been able to publish my father’s diaries – he says – without the interest of Romano Carancini (regional councilor of the Democratic Party, ed.), who made every effort to ensure that they were published in the Quaderni series of the Marche Regional Council. He considered it an interesting theme, both to keep the memory alive and because he was from Macerata.” There is his emotion, visible in his eyes, when they are veiled with tears, but also when his voice breaks, in the memory of his beloved father. The news starts on 8 September 1943, when Berdini writes: «At 7 in the evening, an extraordinary bulletin informs us of the armistice», a joy which, shortly, becomes uncertainty, when the soldiers are asked to choose which side to take, if with the Germans or with the “rebels”, up to the deportation, the journey in the cattle trucks, the detailed chronicle of what he experienced in the concentration and work camp and the return.
The diary
The diary ends on 10 September 1945 when Berdini writes: «I will not explain my arrival, since in such frenzy and joy I remember nothing, I only reaffirm from the first to the last page of my diary. Provoking the serenity, the sweetness that this joyous day brought after the harsh and atrocious prisons.” Giacomo, who had discovered the box containing his father’s diaries since he was a boy, only came into possession of them at the age of thirty and from there the idea of publishing them was born, which materialized many years later: «My children – he explains -, for my 60th birthday, they digitized the diary and had a few copies printed as a gift, the desire to publish everything grew and, as I said, thanks to Carancini, in 2023, we did it. The book is also available on the Regional Council website.”
The anecdote
There is one anecdote, among many, that Berdini remembers: «My father never spoke about his imprisonment and the few times he did it was to tell anecdotes. One fact remained imprinted on me, like a tattoo in my brain: once he found a piece of iron and, working in a rubber factory, using a grinding wheel, he wanted to make a knife from it, to be able to eat the pulp of the potatoes, instead of the peel. While he was working to make the knife, a German soldier saw him and sent him to a segregation cell to await execution. I don’t know how he got out of it.”
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