SESTO FIORENTINO – Coincidences exist, and sometimes they follow favorable astral paths. It was like this for Laura Mazzoni or, rather, for the memory of her that her short life left behind.
Laura, a young partisan, is among the protagonists of the recent volume “Ester and the others” published by «apice libri», an anthology of short biographies on the women who contributed to making the history of Sesto Fiorentino.
Well, shortly after the very well attended public presentation of the volume at the Libreria Rinascita, by pure chance the Municipality of Florence decided to name a street after Laura Mazzoni.
In the book, edited by Monica Barducci, the teacher Chiara Meriggi recounts the salient moments of Laura’s youth, a woman of extraordinary modernity.
Born in 1922 in Castello, then the municipality of Sesto Fiorentino, to a family with a “red” political color, Laura was a beautiful girl: tall, slender, elegant, light brown hair, green eyes. She got married at just nineteen years old in the church of San Michele a Castello. The marriage lasts very little, and Laura returns home to her house.
In August 1944 she was tasked with finding out whether a young man who had just arrived was an infiltrator. On the 12th they meet near the Villa Reale in Castello. Suddenly the area where they find themselves becomes the target of an artillery attack: hit by shrapnel, there is no escape for the two. She has not yet turned 22.
In the history of the Sesto partisans, Laura’s name had disappeared, like that of many other women throughout the country. The Municipality of Sesto Fiorentino brought her back to her memory a few years ago, dedicating a plaque to her in front of the Neto Park.
Then the book where she is also mentioned, now the naming of the street. The circle closes, leaving the bitterness of yet another young life cut short by war.
Tags: book Ester naming street dedicated Laura Mazzoni Florence
