Below is Minister Piantedosi’s speech in the Representative Hall of the Province of Frosinone
I am particularly pleased to be able to personally present the Gold Medal of Civil Merit to the Province of Frosinone.
An important recognition that I strongly wanted as a tribute to the enormous human losses, immense suffering, deprivation and widespread phenomena of destruction and devastation that this territory had to suffer during the Second World War.
A contribution to the Province, which I particularly care about, in the awareness that the entire Ciociaria was, by virtue of its strategic value, heavily marked and affected during the tragic war events.
I would like to thank Doctor Paolo Mieli, a profound expert on that historical period and the Resistance, for having accepted the invitation to participate in this solemn ceremony.
In agreement with the local institutions, we chose, not by chance, for the awarding of the Medal to be held today, 25 April, the national holiday of Liberation from Nazi-Fascist occupation.
For no reason is it permitted to debase the unique meaning of Liberation or to overshadow it
of contents foreign to that precious juncture of Italian history, from which democracy originated. Any attempt to legitimize ideological battles, thus decontextualizing the anniversary of April 25th, is equivalent to appropriating everyone’s identity for the reasons of some.
On April 25th we celebrate those who were able to look beyond the war, beyond the disintegration, beyond their own pain, for a greater objective: a project of a united and democratic Italy.
I’m not just talking about those who theorized democracy as a political project and defense with weapons.
I am also talking about ordinary people, about those who have practiced and defended democratic sentiment in their daily lives, resisting the temptation to give in to hatred, despite having experienced every evil.
Our Republic is founded on these people, as well as on principles.
The Liberation was a long process, paved with the sacrifices of the Italians. Well, a huge part of those sacrifices were borne by the people of Ciociaria.
The Nazi-Fascist military occupation was exhausting, from September ’43 to the spring of ’44: bibliographical sources say that a few days were enough for the Nazi troops to take possession of everything. Homes and food were immediately requisitioned, commercial activities were closed and markets suppressed. Freedom of movement was inhibited, the streets were congested with tanks and artillery. The population, continually threatened, found itself powerless and helpless in the face of the use of force.
I am thinking, for example, of Anagni which, in addition to the damage to its artistic and cultural heritage, suffered heavy restrictions for many months due to the choice of the Nazi-fascist occupiers to use it as a military hospital centre. And again in Alatri, which became a massing point for German troops but also a center of destination for a large number of displaced people.
But it wasn’t just the occupation that devastated the population. The bombings also arrived.
We cannot forget that in Cassino – already totally devastated following the repeated attacks that followed one another starting from 10 September 1943 – the war reached its peak, with the destruction of the Benedictine Abbey of Montecassino, a place of worship and peace.
Frosinone itself, until May 1944, was affected by incessant bombings, as many as 56, which caused numerous victims and enormous material damage. According to documents of the time and according to historical reconstructions, in relation to the number of inhabitants and the building heritage, Frosinone was the hardest hit provincial capital with over 80% of the city fabric razed to the ground.
On the morning of May 31, 1944, when Canadian troops finally managed to enter Frosinone, and then definitively liberated it in the first days of June, they found a desertified and torn city.
Even the areas to the north of the province, although less directly involved in the war, suffered unspeakable suffering due to their geographical location and the presence of the Via Casilina on their territory. The retreat of the war front did not, however, put an end to the martyrdom of this land.
The inhabitants of large parts of the province, already exhausted by months of war and occupation, also had to face violence and oppression carried out by the colonial units aggregated to the Allies, who were responsible for looting, rapes and atrocious crimes, thereby betraying the supreme values moral and civil that inspired the Liberation action itself.
A tragedy that carries within itself a powerful message of redemption and hope: in this land people believed in freedom even when freedom was mixed with other unbearable violence.
Victims of both, losers and winners, the people of Ciociaria looked beyond the unspeakable oppression they suffered and embodied that conciliation which later found its definitive consecration in the Constitution.
Twice offended, the people of Ciociaria believed in democracy twice: first by rebelling with courage and dignity against the ferocious brutality of the Nazi-fascist occupiers – also generously supporting the Allies in their advance – then by forming a strong community network to survive the violence, rebuilding , in fact, with solidarity and self-sacrifice, a regenerated and cohesive social fabric.
There are countless examples that could be given to remember how and how much this province suffered from the devastation of war, how many innocent people in this land lost their lives, their loved ones, their loved ones or were subjected to terrible afflictions.
All those facts demonstrate to what debasement of the most basic and elementary human values, to what moral abyss war fury can lead.
Here, as elsewhere, the memory of those events must be kept alive both out of an ethical duty towards the victims, whose exact number is still unknown today, and because the memory constitutes a severe warning so that what happened no longer has repeat.
Allow me to conclude by recalling that in the current year, in addition to the eightieth anniversary of the bombing of the Benedictine abbey of Montecassino, there is also the sixtieth anniversary of the proclamation, by will of Pope Paul VI, of Saint Benedict as the patron saint of Europe, which took place precisely on the day in which the abbey church of Montecassino, destroyed 20 years earlier, was reconsecrated.
The two facts are intimately connected.
It was a symbolic act, in fact, to proclaim Saint Benedict the patron saint of Europe in conjunction with the return of the abbey to devotion:
Saint Benedict had already saved Europe from darkness once – after the collapse of the Roman Empire – by establishing that rule, made up of spirituality and work, on which divided and distant peoples had recognized themselves.
In the same way, Pope Montini entrusted to Saint Benedict, after the tragedy of the Second World War, the custody of a Europe finally united and reconciled in the same moral and civil principles.
The epic of the abbey, an inestimable treasure of this land, is the allegory of the abyss into which Europe fell, but also of its rebirth. Those values that seemed to have perished in the conflict resisted and gave impetus to reconstruction.
Hence the importance of the memory of the occupation and the war, not only for the people of Ciociaria who today receive the Gold Medal for Civil Merit, but for all of us.
Recalling the pain suffered by the people of Ciociaria, by the Nazi-fascists but also by troops attached to the Allies, must not serve as an exercise in rhetoric, but to recognize the merit of a community which, despite the immense suffering suffered, chose to project itself and believe in the future beyond all claims, without giving in to divisive temptations.
The people of Ciociaria, like the rest of the Italians, made enormous efforts to contribute,
once the tragedy of the Second World War ended, to the rebirth of our country: to those who worked heroically in those dramatic situations, to those who continued to believe in democracy, despite having seen their lives turned upside down, our heartfelt thanks must go.
Europe, born from a hope of peace and a rediscovered unity of purpose based on respect for democratic values and human dignity, is also due to the sacrifices of this courageous land which, despite everything, was able to look beyond.
And it is therefore from here that we like to wish Happy Liberation Day to everyone!
