April 25, Italy’s Liberation Day

On the 25th of April 2013 the 68th anniversary of Italy‘s liberation is celebrated. This is an important day to remember the Italian Partisan Resistance against Fascist dictatorship and Nazi occupation which thanks to which Italy reconquered freedom. Even if the Partisan Movement was varied and divided from the inside, it was politically dominated by the Italian Communist Party (in Italian Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI), whose political leader was, at the time, Palmiro Togliatti.

Even those who have not personally experienced this war should know what it meant for our country: 44,720 partisans were killed and 21,168 were disabled by Nazis and Fascists. It was a “people’s war”, a war for the liberation from strangers, that mobilized 364,773 Partisans and patriots. It was the largest and most spontaneous popular movement in the Italian history.

68 years after that April 25 (Milan and Turin’ s liberation day), Italy has not forgotten the sacrifice of many of its people who lost their lives because they believed in their country, who were deported to forced-labor camps and to German factories because they refused to join the Wehrmacht and who knows what else.
War crimes that Italy can not forget, like the Fosse Ardeatine massacre where 335 Italians (soldiers and civilians) were killed, in response to the Via Rasella attempt by 12 partisans where 35 German soldiers died. After that Adolf Hitler decided to shoot 10 Italians for every German soldier killed, to destroy the neighborhood of Rome and to deport 1000 anti-Fascist hostages for every Nazi soldier dead.

The “three martyrs” Mario Cappelli, Luigi Nicolò and Adelio Pagliarini hanged in piazza Giulio Cesare (Rimini), today Piazza Tre Martiri (Three Martyrs square).