The Resistance in Vigevano: many partisans and anti-fascists died fighting far from home

VIGEVANO – Seventy-nine years since the liberation of Italy from Nazi-fascism. These days also coincide with the foundation of our newspaper by Carlo Natale, one of the promoters of the Cln in Vigevano. It is therefore anti-fascism, with the Constitution born from the Resistance, that represents the DNA of this newspaperdespite all controversy, more or less miserable: the Informant is always the one that came out for the first time on May 25, 1945.

And here, through a reconstruction carried out by the archivist Marta Bonzanini of the “Resistance stories” concerning the people of Vigevano: from the anti-fascist Giovanni Leoni shot in the Castle to the many partisans who died fighting in the mountains, far from home, up to the attack on the German train.

“We became rebels out of an internal reaction to what had been the collapse of our army. And all our illusions, founded on political lies, collapsed one by one… rebellion against a government that had prevented us by force, by propaganda, by police systems, from thinking with our own heads, from thinking like free men.

Was what we did right? Yes, it was right”. With these words, on the pages of the clandestine newspaper “Stella Tricolore” distributed in the Langhe, the reasons of many who refused to respond to the enlistment notices were reiterated, a choice which entailed the death sentence. Young people who no longer wanted to be sent to fight on the fronts of a lost war and women who found a commitment in the Resistance movement that would lead them to participate, albeit with difficulty, in the civil and political reconstruction of the country.

In great historical events, where the masses are the protagonists, it is appropriate to return to the events of individuals, to the individuality of their experiences, without losing sight of the context. In Vigevano, the Armistice of 8 September 1943 was immediately followed by the birth of the National Liberation Committee while the demonstrations against the German command stationed in Castello intensified to the point of causing a shootout of which Laura Allocchio was the victim. In retaliation, following the assassination of the soldier Mario Toso, Giovanni Leoni, an anti-fascist municipal employee who will be named after the brigade which, together with the Crespi and the Beato Matteo, will constitute the city’s resistance nuclei, is shot in Castello.

29 April 1945: partisans and political leaders in front of the Vigevano Town Hall

Far from Vigevano, in the first months of 1944, the anti-fascists Giovanni Costa and Vincenzo Cantone died in concentration camps. Among the many who join the groups operating in Oltrepo’ and Valsesia are Carlo Alberto Crespi, son of the well-known industrialist, shot on the wall of the Varallo cemetery on 3 April, Guido Ivaldi, collaborator of the engineer Rota, killed in the Cuneo area on 7 July , and Artemio Duca, shot in Varzi on 14 September 1944. The winter of 1944 was the time of terror. The bridge over the Ticino is bombed: 27 people are killed on the train passing over it.

On 6 October, following the release from Mortara prison of Alliotta partisan Carlo Boldizzoni, three young men from Leoni were shot in Castello: Salvatore Frasconà, Carlo Gazzo, Giovanni Profili. A few days later, shoemakers Cesare Allegro in Val Varaita and Carlo Bonacina in the Bergamo area fell fighting. Between 30 November and 2 December, Mario Parini, a student at the Polytechnic of Milan, in the Biella area, Luigi Barbieri in Castelletto Ticino with other comrades from the Redi division, and Dino Arrigoni, in Gattinara, both shoemakers, were executed.

While the unrest multiplied in the city, soldiers surprised in Vigevano during the days of the Armistice and who joined the local brigades were arrested and shot, like Raoul Canuti, originally from Rimini, killed on the bridge on the road to Gambolò on 12 December. On the wall of the cemetery, in the fog of December 27th, Luigi Malandra, a farmer from Cilavegna guilty of having given aid to partisans, was killed. Far from Vigevano, the teacher Anna Botto dies in Ravensbruck, arrested for having facilitated the escape of allied and partisan prisoners.

On April 26, with the proclamation announcing the liberation, all powers passed to the National Liberation Committee, chaired by Emilio Galli. But in Vigevano the war was not over: on 26 April, in the clashes that led to the surrender of the German garrison, Cesare Manna of the Beato Matteo brigade and Pietro Pavia of the Leoni brigade died. On the morning of the 27th, the news of the arrival of three armored trains at the station alerted the CLN which asked to let the convoys pass. It will be an unheard appeal: the partisans divert the train onto an occupied track and open fire. In the clash, Leone partisans Natale Franchini and Natale Pisani, workers, Ambrogio Sacchi, Roberto Pellicelli, Gianfranco Rossini, Battista Pazzi, Angelo Tambussi, shoemakers, the student Giuseppe Chiesa lost their lives; the employee Bruno Bonomi, the worker Felice Chiappani and the baker Angelo Guaita from Crespi, the mechanic Cornelio Palmenti from Beato Matteo, as well as four civilians, including little Cesare Corsico, aged 6.

On the same day, in the woods just beyond the Ronchi, Pierino Boselli was killed. At the end of April the CLN managed to negotiate the peaceful passage of a retreating German column and the return of the prisoners held in the Castle. On May 1st the Allies enter an already liberated city. The days of Liberation come to an end in Vigevano, the time begins for the counting of those who have not returned, for mourning, for the necessary reconstructions, for the long journey which, through lights and shadows, contradictions and conciliations, will lead to democracy and peace.