Goro remembers the massacre of the little car

by Riccardo Giori

Goro. The council room of the Goro Town Hall was chosen for the commemoration and memory of one of the darkest pages of the province from Ferrara. It was March 28, 1944 when Ernesto Alberghini, Luigi Cavicchini, Arrigo Luppi, Augusto Mazzoni and Don Pietro Rizzo, then parish priest of Jolanda di Savoia, were barbarously killed by the men of the Social Republic, a hastily organized massacre in retaliation for the death at the partisan hands of two criminals belonging to the second company of the National Republican Guard, the Salò militia, serving in Longastrino. The massacre took place in the Mesola area, on the embankment close to the pontoon bridge of the Po di Goro, and is remembered as the “Macchinina” massacre due to the presence of an ancient water pumping machine near the place where it occurred.

The ceremony, held by the mayor of the municipality of Goro, Marika Maria Bugnoli, saw the participation of the president of the province of Ferrara Gianni Michele Padovani, the Regional Councilor Marcella Zappaterra, the director of the State Archives Davide Guernieri and the fifth classes of primary school of Goro and third F of the 1st grade secondary school of Goro. “Today it is more important than ever to rediscover ourselves as anti-fascists” recalled the mayor of Goro, and although fascism today has taken on other forms it is also important to keep the memory alive so that “the new generations, thanks to these events, take charge of these traditions positively, safeguarding that heritage of ideals and values ​​on which our democracy is founded” added the councilor for culture and education Daniela Mangolini. “Freedom, justice, equality, anti-fascism, are the same ideals written in our Constitution” echoed Gianni Michele Padovani, “which was therefore also written by these five men, and is the pillar that supports our entire being together, It is up to us to keep it alive and pass it on to the younger generations, who are well represented here.”

Marcella Zappaterra then intervened, underlining that “today we enjoy rights, freedoms, even privileges for which we must thank the people who sacrificed themselves starting from the ‘martyrs of the toy car’. It is important that there are students, the young generations to whom we have the obligation to pass on those values ​​as we have the obligation to make them feel involved so that they in turn strengthen our democracy by keeping alive the memory of what has been so that it doesn’t happen again.”

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