“Transmitting freedom”, in Gandino the memory of the clandestine radio of the Resistance

Gandino. A commitment to “transmit freedom and democracy”, even in a strictly literal sense. On the occasion of the celebrations dedicated to Liberation Day, Thursday 25 April, the Municipality of Gandino will dedicate a particular memory to Doctor Giuseppe Mosconi and to the courageous initiative of a group of young people from Gandino who in 1943, following the fall of Fascism, installed in a clandestine radio station in the country to relaunch Radio London’s broadcasts.

Giuseppe Mosconi was for decades a doctor in the town, an official knight of the Republic and in the 1980s councilor for ecology in the Province. He was born in 1927 and after years at the Celana College and Sarpi, he graduated in medicine in Milan in 1952. He then obtained specializations in internal medicine in Pavia, in cardiology in Turin and in pneumology in Milan. Mosconi was the son of Giulio, mayor of Gandino in the post-war period. In the 1940s, the family was active in the protection of Jewish exiles in Gandino, earning a commendation from the Municipality in 2006. He was active in politics in the Christian Democrats, but also president of the Consortium Sports Center in Casnigo, of the Gandino Retirement Home and alongside the AVIS groups of Gandino and Cirano.

Among the young people who installed the clandestine radio in Gandino was Giuseppe Mosconi, who recounted those days in a diary, revealed in 2011 upon his death. “From July 1943 to April 1945 – he wrote – began the years of lead, of the fratricidal struggle, of the insurrection against the Nazis and the military forces born from fascism. Radio London communicated clandestinely and its bulletins were transmitted and heard by us from Lombardy to Emilia-Romagna up to the borders of the Gothic Line, the focal point of the fighting between the Nazi-Fascists and the Liberation Divisions. After a few months the radio was ready and we began to create an organizational program: three broadcasts a day, installed in an abandoned attic, in via Mazzini, in a hidden place in the oldest neighborhood of the town, away from prying eyes”. The antenna repeated the frequencies of Radio London, so as to warn the partisans of the arrival of aircraft with food, weapons and ammunition. Then it was closed because the existence of the station had been reported to the Nazi-fascist authorities.

The morning celebrations will start at 9am with the meeting in Piazza Vittorio Veneto and the subsequent laying of laurel wreaths at the monuments of Cirano and Barzizza. At 9.45am the procession will move from the Town Hall square towards the Chapel of the Fallen in the Cemetery and subsequently towards the Basilica, where mass will be celebrated. The morning will end with the official ceremony in front of the Salone della Valle, on whose façade there are plaques in memory of the fallen Gandhi soldiers. Before the speech of the mayor Filippo Servalli, the reading of some passages taken from the doctor’s diary will be proposed. Giuseppe Moconi. The Civic Musical Corps of Gandino will accompany the entire ceremony, to which the primary school children will give their contribution, who will perform the Mameli Hymn.