“Dear fellow citizens, associations, civil, military and religious authorities present.
Every year on April 25th, Liberation Day, we commemorate the day in which women and men, from all social backgrounds, with different ideas, with distinct cultures and traditions, were able to see their dream of democracy come true, thus giving us the freedom that today is underlying every aspect of our daily life.
Almost eighty years after those days we still find ourselves, as a community, under the monuments which in every city, in every country, remember the sacrifice of those who chose to fight so that we could enjoy those fundamental rights that, too often, we take for granted. taken for granted and which, instead, for those people, for those Italians, were only an uncertain hope.
For this reason, April 25th is, and must be, Freedom Day for everyone.
A moment in which peace, the fundamental rights of the individual and the community, equality and respect for democratic principles, key elements of our nation, are celebrated.
Values that led those women and men to fight, opposing the fury of Nazi-fascism, to rebuild a country in which they can live and raise their children.
For this reason, April 25th is the date that marked the beginning of a new path for Italy, a path that led to the birth of our democratic Republic and our Constitution.
Concepts that must be expressed, today perhaps more than then, in the centrality of the dignity of the person, in social justice, in respect for the environment as an integral part of our daily life.
This morning we are here to share the founding moment of our Italy, of its rebirth after a dark and dark period, paying homage to those who fought for freedom even at the cost of their own lives.
But, precisely by remembering those who looked forward and believed in a better tomorrow, we cannot close our eyes to what is happening in the world.
The light of democracy that illuminates our lives today must never lead us to forget the fragility of these gifts.
We have understood this in the many examples that history and the news have highlighted to us in recent years.
We have understood this in too many events that have occurred in recent times, dotted with new horrors and the barbarism of totalitarianism and every form of fanaticism.
We have understood this on all those occasions that bring us back to new episodes in which the suppression of “freedom” and every form of justice rises to a squalid model of life.
And this is why we must never forget that what has been conquered for us, and for those who will come after us, is at the same time too precious and too fragile to be experienced as something immutable.
That Freedom, which is the heritage of our everyday life, to which we are so accustomed that we risk experiencing it as something taken for granted, has come at a high price.
It is therefore not enough to be here as a mere exercise of historical memory to concretely pay homage, if not with our behaviour, to those who paid this price.
We must, with a renewed commitment, say thank you to the Italians who chose to fight in every possible way, with the tools they had, against the madness of a regime, believing in a better tomorrow,
just as, in the same way, we must say thanks to the many young people who arrived from distant countries with the allied troops to restore peace on European soil.
Throughout the La Spezia area, there are many examples of great heroism, carried out by individuals or entire communities, with which they chose to oppose totalitarianism.
Women and men, old people, young people and children, workers, soldiers, civilians, religious people fought, challenging the enemy openly, striking in the factories, providing aid to the Allies, hiding the fugitives and the persecuted, sometimes simply pronouncing a NO which it could be worth a life, often one’s own.
It was a popular struggle that saw some take up arms, others stop factories and still others did not hand over ships and barracks to the Nazi troops.
Today we remember them all and with them we also remember all the victims of Nazi-fascist fury and madness. We join the families who lost a relative in those years of war and devastation, both in our territory and outside our country, in distant fronts, or, worse, in the extermination camps.
Those people from La Spezia knew how to be heroic and knew how to show solidarity with the survivors of the Holocaust in their attempt to reach a homeland.
And for this reason it is right, it is necessary, to remember that the Province of La Spezia is among the Italian institutions decorated with the gold medal for military valor for its activity in the partisan struggle. This is because the people of La Spezia had the courage and strength to resist the barbarity of a regime without giving in and without ever ceasing to hope and commit themselves, even with enormous sacrifices, to arrive at that tomorrow of peace and freedom which, now, is our today and that we must guarantee to those who come after us.
We read in the text of the motivation: “On the days of the recovery, its citizens ascribed to their privilege and honor the reconquest of their homes and freedoms”.
In the same way we must remember that the City of La Spezia, already a silver medal for military valour, was also awarded the gold medal for civil merit “The population of La Spezia, in the aftermath of the Second World War, with a Christian and commendable spirit civil virtue was distinguished by particular initiatives and humanitarian acts, in welcoming and assisting Jewish refugees who escaped the Nazi concentration camps who intended to reach the promised land by sea. Admirable example of human brotherhood and solidarity between peoples.”
But all this must not be enough for us, we would not pay the right homage to the women and men who chose the path of freedom in those years if we thought of this day only as a moment in which to remember the past.
Only yesterday we inaugurated an artistic installation at the entrance to the former Quintino Sella Antiaircraft Shelter in Via Prione, a place of memory where we can understand what the madness and tragedy of a war is.
Inside that gallery, through a sensorial journey that amplifies the emotions of the simulation of the bombing of 18 April 1943, it is possible to relive part of what the people of La Spezia felt in those years, from the fear of those dramatic moments to the solidarity that was created in the inside a dark space where survival was the first thought.
Even from that place, from the warning it represents, we can and must draw a lesson and make it an instrument.
Those child’s eyes that have welcomed us since yesterday upon entering that tunnel, where the broken men desperately sought refuge, speak to each of us and burden us with responsibility. I am an image of hope. They are the full meaning of an important day in our history as it is and always will be April 25th every year.
We must be able to look to the future, starting from the reflection that comes to us from the testimony of those who gave freedom and peace, to try to teach those who come after us that every day we need to commit ourselves so that there will never be a war again.
We do this in a difficult historical moment, in which fighting is taking place close to the borders of Europe and in which conflicts not only mark the battlefield, but also the lives of populations affected by increasingly ferocious actions.
The price is still too high and those who pay it are the weakest, the defenceless, the most fragile.
We have a moral duty not to be spectators, but to be an active part of a change.
We must be able to recover that community spirit that made us stronger and better in the most difficult moments, so that there can still be a new April 25th of freedom and peace.
Because if, rightly, we remember every year that it is important to never take for granted the rights that we enjoy today, so laboriously earned, it is equally important that these values are fully lived, defended and exercised together with the duties they entail and that they do not remain only on the paper of a proclamation or on the writings of a monument.
We must make them our own, as institutions and as individual citizens, every day.
This must be our truest and most concrete tribute to all those we remember here today and who fought for Freedom.
This is what he taught us and teaches us every year on April 25th.
Long live Freedom, Long live Peace”.
Pierluigi Peracchini
Mayor of La Spezia
President of the Province of La Spezia
