When we talk about mafia massacres, our thoughts immediately go to Sicily, but 3 May 1982 cannot be erased from historical memory. On that date, Reggio Calabria was hit in the heart. In the city center, at 8:20 in the morning, a car bomb disintegrated the body and life of a man: Gennaro Musella, an engineer from Salerno, who had moved his company to Calabria.
42 years after the reflection on good and evil
That day in May, the city was awakened by a great roar. The strong explosion made the earth tremble and it was thought to be an earthquake. At the site of the attack, many students who were going to school at that time. We cannot forget the barbarity.
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Remembering and transmitting memory is a duty that civil society cannot avoid in its redemption from mafia cancer. 42 years after that daydaughter Adriana together with “Caponnetto” Foundationthey will remember that dramatic moment, sharing that memory with young people, “so that the distinction between good and evil is clear and the hope of building a better world does not die”.
They will do it tomorrow, May 3, on the anniversary of the attack in which Musella lost his life. In the evening a holy mass was celebrated at the Sanctuary of San Paolo alla Rotonda. A moment of prayer and reflection in memory of the entrepreneur from Salerno, but also of all the other innocent victims of the ‘Ndrangheta and mafias which will be preceded by the meeting hosted in the auditorium of the Reggio Sanctuary itself. In particular, students from the city’s schools will be involved.
They will be there to talk to the kids Michele Di Stefano And Cosimo Sframeli And Antonio Marzialeregional guarantor for children and adolescents.
42 years after the attack, Adriana Musella remembers her father Gennaro
It was a splendid and warm sunny day on May 3, 1982. Gennaro Musella, at 8.20, came down from home as usual, only by chance, without the company of his dear nephew Saverio who he used to accompany to school every morning. .
A few days later, his daughter Adriana recalls today, «we should have happily celebrated his birthday, but we hadn’t taken into account the cruel fate. A few meters, the opening of the door, the starting, the deafening roar.”
The city shook as if shaken by an earthquake: my father was disintegrated by a very powerful charge of TNT placed under the driving seat. The pitch darkness, livid flames of fire, the car crumpled on itself, flying into the air and then returning to the ground, while the heartbreaking scream of the people in the street rose into the sky, like a piercing cry of pain.
A chasm formed on the asphalt which still resurfaces today when it rains a lot. A column of thick black smoke rose towards the sky, surrounding the buildings, while nothing remained of the man’s torn and disemboweled body. His wide eyes seemed to be almost in disbelief. Only a stump of him remained; the crushed brain was found stuck to the wall of a building in the street opposite, a hand collected on the asphalt. By a strange twist of fate, an agenda, left on the ground stained with blood, the only survivor in the total devastation, indicated the date of 8 May 1982, for the new tender for the port of Bagnara Calabra.
This is how my father, Gennaro, died Musella, died in a land that was not his but which he had learned to love and with which he had fallen in love, dreaming of creating a second Positano in the land of Calabria. But her dream disintegrated with him and his smile faded. After just two days, she would have turned 57.
In a moment of madness, the destruction of a body, of a life, of a family that has never been the same again and that from yesterday to today has never stopped paying the consequences of that tragedy that stamped us life is what we carry inside us. Even today I can’t explain the reason for such barbarism and even today I can’t help but be emotionally involved in the memory.
My father was not a hero but a simple and good person who paid a high price for his rebellion against the arrogance and oppression of the mafia, in defending dignity and freedom. On that street, that day, part of me died together with him. Today, no one can kill me anymore… it’s already happened.
I have spent my life in daily testimony in order to transmit its memory and remind it to people’s consciences. I don’t know if I succeeded but I certainly know that I did everything I could…good or bad, a little or a lot, but fulfilling my duty as a daughter…When a figure from the institutions is killed, the institutions themselves remember him but ,if ordinary citizens fall, the buildings remain very far away and we risk killing them twice in forgetfulness and denial of truth and justice. Here then arises the need for family members to get involved and the pain becomes strength and an indispensable tool for redemption.
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The victims of the mafia do not cry out for revenge but demand and deserve justice, orphans of a future stolen from them through oppression. In ancient Rome, for those convicted of very serious crimes, there was “damnatio memoriae”, forced oblivion, the elimination of every trace that could preserve the memory.
The fight of memory against oblivion represents the redemption from barbarism so as not to make so many unjust deaths in vain and to give meaning to what the memory of some men has no meaning and their horrendous end must be passed on so that it can be transformed into a common heritage .
The most difficult part has been reserved for them, that of dying, but we have a much easier task, to spread and protect their memory so as not to make their sacrifice in vain, but to transform it into an opportunity in the construction of a civil conscience.
