Aquileia, 28 October 1921. A woman chooses the body among the eleven that represented the different fronts on which Italy had fought the First World War. She was the mother of Antonio Bergamas, second lieutenant of the Royal Army, originally from Gradisca d’Isonzo, an Austro-Hungarian subject, who in disguise had gone to fight with the Italians falling on the battlefield.
One hundred years later that day is commemorated in Aquileia. From there began the journey on the railway line that touched Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome. A train that at very moderate speed passed from station to station, giving the population the opportunity to honour the fallen symbol.
“It was a necessary day. World War I was a mass war that produced mass death and, consequently, mass mourning in millions of families, whose consciences were marked by immeasurable pain – explains Luciano Zani, historian of Sapienza University. From Rome-. To this pain it was necessary to give an answer and an outlet, a reason and a meaning. Mass mourning has generated the mass cult of fallen soldiers, common to all countries involved in the war. The sacralisation of the nation accompanied the war and tried to justify the sacrifices made for the homeland.
That day, and the following days until 4 November, were a collective rite, prepared and planned with care, but also spontaneous and participated by hundreds of thousands of Italians, who honoured the coffin containing the remains of the unknown soldier, chosen by Maria Bergamas among eleven bodies, in the name of all the mothers and widows of Italy. The choice of a soldier without a name, among the millions of dead and missing without a name, was the idea that allowed to reconcile respect for
Then on 4 November 1921 the body arrived in Rome, at the Altare della Patria . All the representatives of the combatants, widows and mothers of the fallen, with the King at the head, and the flags of all the regiments, moved to meet the Unknown Soldier, who was carried by a group of gold medals to Santa Maria degli Angels. Intense moments between worship and memory that one hundred years later underline the sense of a celebration that is renewed around the monument dedicated to the Unknown Soldier even in thousands of Italian municipalities.
“The celebration of the dead soldiers, with name and without name, in the First World War should not only make them the symbol of sacrificial death for the salvation of the homeland and the perennial resurrection of the fallen in the collective memory of the nation – continues Zani -. The direct memory of those years died with the last survivor missing. It is time to give the floor to history.
And history tells us that that rite of November 4, 1921 was unfortunately an interlude of silence, meditation and mourning between two historical eras. The first, with the war, marked the suicide of Europe, especially the imperial one, and the catastrophe of its civilisation: a terrifying demographic crisis, an entire “lost generation”, about ten million dead and a huge number of mutilated and disabled , millions of refugees and deportees due to the redefinition of state borders; the loss of the economic primacy of Europe.
The second era – adds the historian – saw in Italy the embezzlement by fascism of combatants and the myths of war and victory, the translation of the epic of the trench into violent forms of armed and militarised politics, the rapid twisting of national values in extreme nationalism up to the triumph of fascism with its new wars. So every Municipality of Italy that wants to give honorary citizenship to the Unknown Soldier should speak to young people about the sacrifice of the fallen as a need for peace and not an exaltation of war ”.
The second era – adds the historian – saw in Italy the embezzlement by fascism of combatants and the myths of war and victory, the translation of the trench epic into violent forms of armed and militarised politics, the rapid twisting of national values in extreme nationalism up to the triumph of fascism with its new wars. So every Municipality of Italy that wants to give honorary citizenship to the Unknown Soldier should speak to young people about the sacrifice of the fallen as a need for peace and not an exaltation of war ”.
The second era – adds the historian – saw in Italy the embezzlement by fascism of combatants and the myths of war and victory, the translation of the epic of the trench into violent forms of armed and militarised politics, the rapid twisting of national values in extreme nationalism up to the triumph of fascism with its new wars. So every Municipality of Italy that wants to give honorary citizenship to the Unknown Soldier should speak to young people about the sacrifice of the fallen as a need for peace and not an exaltation of war ”.
The rapid twisting of national values into extreme nationalism until the triumph of fascism with its new wars. So every Municipality of Italy that wants to give honorary citizenship to the Unknown Soldier should speak to young people about the sacrifice of the fallen as a need for peace and not an exaltation of war ”. the rapid twisting of national values into extreme nationalism until the triumph of fascism with its new wars. So every Municipality of Italy that wants to give honorary citizenship to the Unknown Soldier should speak to young people about the sacrifice of the fallen as a need for peace and not an exaltation of war ”.
A memory, that of the fallen of all wars that calls to be “keepers of memory and builders of history” to quote the 29th Congress of the National Association veterans from captivity and their families just ended in Rome, but also an invitation addressed to young people to understand the past and work for the future by treasuring the testimonies of grandparents and great-grandparents.
“The Italian military internees have told us several times, in their written and oral memoirs, that to survive with dignity in a concentration camp, food is not enough to feed oneself and a blanket to protect oneself from the cold” underlines Luciano Zani, but “spiritual calories” are needed.
Today the memory of the Unknown Soldier goes to the fallen of all wars and to the importance of “not forgetting” those who gave their lives for Italy.
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