by Anna Chiappini and Davide Nanni*
April 25, 1945 is the founding date of our democracy. Today, when the direct witnesses of those years, for obvious age reasons, are fewer and fewer, we believe it is important to fully valorise the meaning of that historical moment without falling into tired celebratory rhetoric: it is not a celebration of “freedom” but of liberation, that is, of a freedom rediscovered and conquered at a high price after twenty years of fascist dictatorship which ended in a disastrous conflict, in the Nazi occupation of the peninsula and in a ferocious civil war between Italians.
Our Constitution, the jurist Piero Calamandrei recalled in a famous speech, is born “everywhere an Italian died to redeem freedom and dignity” trampled by the Nazi-fascists. There were many of them, often young, and among them there was no shortage of women, protagonists of a long-silent resistance in the post-war period when a still conservative society wanted to “normalize” that experience of female freedom and emancipation which was also a partisan struggle.
If during the fascist regime women were mostly confined to the home, portrayed as “angels of the hearth” and subjected to rigid male authority, during the years of the Resistance many of them fought, hid partisans, Jews and allied soldiers, carried out the precious logistical role of “relays” bringing food, weapons and clandestine propaganda materials to the fighting nuclei. They didn’t just risk their lives: 4,653 of them were arrested and tortured; over 2,750 were deported to Nazi camps; 3,882 were executed or fell in combat. At least 70 thousand women were involved in the Resistance and around 35 thousand were recognized as “partisan fighters”, but their number is probably greater.
Among the nineteen women decorated with the Gold Medal for Military Valor we remember Irma Bandiera, shot in Bologna on 14 August 1944 after seven days of terrible torture and torture. “Mimma” was 29 years old, she was a beautiful and wealthy girl, she could have waited in peace for the end of the war but she didn’t: she joined the Resistance and became a partisan “relay”, remaining consistent with her commitment to a freer and fairer Italy . She was captured by the fascists on the evening of August 7, then subjected to a real ordeal with the aim of obtaining information on her fighting companions.
Her beautiful face was disfigured by torture, her eyes blinded, she suffered unspeakable violence: however, Irma did not speak. She also remained silent in front of her parents’ house, where her improvised platoon of tormentors finished her off with machine guns. Irma Bandiera’s courage and tenacity are a powerful symbol of resistance to any form of oppression, yesterday and today. For this reason we have committed the city council to dedicating a street, square or other public place in Ferrara to her memory. A vivid memory, because “Mimma” was right: “the dead pass, the dreams remain”. We want to dedicate this April 25th to her and to all the women who are fighting for freedom, peace and justice.
*Pd city councilors and candidates for the next administrative elections
