Today is April 25, Italian Liberation Day, the commemoration of the end of Fascist and Nazi rule in Italy in 1945.
Like every year on this day, I take time out to browse the wonderful Archivio Luce, Italy’s historical photography and cinema library. The editors always do a 25 Aprile feature in the days leading up to the national holiday.
It’s also a day that I think back to my early years as a student in Italy in the late 1980s. Many of the parents of my friends at the time were already young adults by the time war arrived in Europe.
Many of the fathers had been soldiers in the Fascist army. They told me stories of prisoner-of-war and concentration camps where they were confined after they were captured in Russia or Africa. My professor’s father was killed by the Nazis in the terrible Cephalonia massacre in occupied Greece.
One of my early mentors in Padua, the great philologist Gianfranco Folena, had been held as a political prisoner in a concentration camp. I would sit rapt on my classroom chair as he would talk about teaching Greek to his fellow prisoners, many of whom were intellectuals like him.
There is war on the continent today and Fascist politicians continue to rise on both sides of the Atlantic. Italy’s current government is its first “post-Fascist” coalition and it openly traces its origins to Mussolini’s party.
I can only wonder what professor Folena would say today.
Just like every year, I scan the faces in the photos and try to imagine what it felt like to taste freedom after more than two decades of murderous authoritarian rule.
And every year, I renew my commitment to fight Fascism. This morning my Instagram feed is filled with posts by Italian friends and colleagues who proudly declare themselves “anti-Fascists.”
Happy Liberation Day! Long live the anti-Fascist Republic and long live our commitment to fight Fascism!