Page 149 - NONOSTANTE IL LUNGO TEMPO TRASCORSO…Le stragi nazifasciste nella guerra di liberazione 1943–1945

ENG
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CONCLUSION Marco De Paolis
Marco De Paolis

The long path of construction of the Italian Repub- The so-called denied justice: denied to the
lic is paved by many important events that have survivors, to those who lost their beloved ones; to
preceded the Constitution issued in 1948; this pro- all those people who didn’t receive anything from
cess stems also from the sacrifices of our Armed life. This is what Lorenzo Buzzini claimed during
Forces during the second world war, and from the the trial for the massacre in San Polo di Arezzo:
painful toll of civilians. Destruction and devasta- he was only seven years old when the Germans
tion of the territories, depopulation, crimes like slaughtered his entire family. Thousands of Ital-
those committed in Valle del Setta, in Monte Sole ian families, who already suffered for those trag-
at the end of September 1944, where more than edies, were denied their justice in the postwar
800 people were slaughtered, hundreds of farm- period, also because of the “closet of shame”
houses and livestock completely swept away. Ex- (Franco Giustolisi).
ecutions, hangings, violence and tortures carried This exhibition wants to overturn that illegal
out in the cities where people opposed the nazi judicial order, which in 1960 buried all the trials
occupation. Violent deportations of civilians and and investigations concerning nazi crimes after
soldiers to extermination camps or prison camps September 8th 1943; we want to underline that
where many people would die or find only depriva- “despite the long time”, those crimes are not for-
tions, humiliation, sufferance and pain. gotten, as well as the sacrifices of our soldiers
The deadly project of Nazism is also achieved and the violence endured by Italian men and
thanks to an insidious and paradoxical mystifica- women in our Country. Indeed, we want to re-
tion of reality: in order to slaughter thousands of member, to explain and to honour our history, so
defenceless Italian war prisoners, the nazis quali- that our young people will learn and will treasure
fied all those soldiers who were loyal to their King it as Italian citizens.
and Motherland as traitors, as well as those who The acknowledgment of values of freedom,
didn’t surrender their weapons and enlist in the democracy and solidarity -that are at the base of
German Army or in the Social Republic’s one. For our Constitution and our State- is also expressed
this reason, many massacres were committed through legal principles (natural, national and in-
in Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia and other foreign ternational law) that military trials against Ger-
territories where our troops were deployed; our man war criminals painfully tried to fulfil.
soldiers were slaughtered just because they kept
their oath of loyalty to our Country.
This mystification also damaged the civilians:
the Germans subverted all the rules by enact-
ing against the civilians the same psychological
mechanism that deprived of humanity all those
sent to extermination camps. The people were
thus transformed into hostages, into guilty sub-
jects, just because they lived in the same territo-
ries of the Patriots. The partisan operations were
illegally considered like terrorist attacks; the
harmless and defenceless citizens (even women,
elderly people and children) were hostages and
their murder was not ascribable to nazi crimes,
but rather to all those Partisans who wanted to
free their country. A real state of exception.
In addition to this dramatic injustice, we find
an even more painful event.

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