We publish the full text of the speech that the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, kept in Genoa, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation, on April 25, 2025.
We celebrate today, In Genoa, the eightieth anniversary of the liberation from the fascist dictatorship and the Nazi employment.
A region, Liguria which, rich in patriotic virtues, has contributed so much to the conquest of the freedom of our people.
We honor the populations that were able to be protagonists in supporting and supporting the partisans of the mountains and cities.
From the city of Genoa, a gold medal for military valor for the liberation struggle that – says the motivation – “bent the enemy overhang obtained the surrender of the strong German garrison, thus saving the port, the industries and the honor”, to the city of Savona, gold medal, awarded for “the obstinacy not to suffer the shame of the tyranny”, to the provinces of Imperia and La Spezia, Also gold medals.
As well as to the cities of La Spezia and Albenga, to the province of Genoa, awarded the gold medal for civil valor for resistance. To the war crosses assigned, with the same motivation, to the municipalities of Rossiglione, San Colombano Certenoli in Val Cichero, Zignago, Albenga.
From Liguria then came a strong lesson on the morality of the Resistanceon the basic reasons that opposed the domination of man on man, they opposed a conflict born not to defend their community but as an aggression to the freedom of other peoples.
Assuming elementary behaviors of respect and solidarity, the partisans uniform themselves with that Cichage code, which made it possible that, in the formations, the garment had to eat last, it could only fall asleep once I personally ascertained that everything worked and was in order, had the most heavy guard shifts, that it did not blame, that the women did not harass, who did not refer without paying the necessary, who should be divided with the others whatever it was received.
Fraternity. An experience that has drawn inspiration from a figure, that of Aldo Gastaldithe partisan “Bisagno”commander of the Garibaldi-Cichero division, protagonist of a commitment for the homeland, justice, freedom, considered as a love service, as well as exercise of responsibility.
Died dramatically a month after liberation, gold medal for military valor, the church of Genoa has determined to start the canonical process of beatification of this servant of God.
A little earlier, aThe Staglieno cemetery, I paid tribute to the fallen of the resistance movement And, with them, I ideally paid homage to the figures of the patriots of the two resurgents that are hosted in it.
In 1945 Italy joined again – South and North – after the latter had been separated and detained hostage by the Nazis and by the Republic of Salò.
Many suffering and original characters of the Ligurian resistance, solidly connected to the centers of Turin and of Milan And destined, like they, to suffer the Nazi and fascist barbarism at the bottom.
With the massacres of Easter of blood of 1944 at Benedicta, of Fontanafredda di Masone, at the Olivetta di Portofino, in Costa Binella di Testica, at the mouth of the Centa di Albenga, in Molini di Triora, Torre Paponi di Pietrabruna where two priests were burned alive, in Arcola’s ressora.
Here the political maturation of patriots develops that they know how to hire, alongside the military operations of sabotage and contrast to the employment forces, the responsibility of government.
Here are rings of that arc of experiences of “free areas” that confirm the presence on the territory of the partisan formations and the close relationship with the populations.
Here, with the free Republic of Pigna and Triora in the Imperiese, of Torriglia in the Genoese, of the Republic of Vara in the Alta Val di Vara Nello Spezia, the demonstration of the extraneousness between regime and populations emerges.
This was manifested in the valleys, and was confirmed in the cities from which thousands of women and men were ignored to forced work in Germany, to the deportation to the Lager of Mauthausen.
AND The factory, the factories, occurred, once more, places of solidarity, schools of democracywith the growth of union consciousness, and the establishment of the workers’ defense teams. With the strikes in the Savonese and in the Spezino at the end of 1943 and in 1944, which gave a strong push to enlarge the consent towards the partisan movement. The strikes in Genoa of 1943 until June 1944, up to the 1945 insurrectional strike.
The collapse of the internal front of the regime was manifested day after day.
The Graziani call for enrollment in the fascist departments had made an involuntary contribution to the partisans: placed in front of the dilemma or republics or on the run, many young people chose the mountain road, overcoming all expected. The partisans made burnt land of the republican attempts of administrative organization: Burn the registers of the RSI of the RSI prevented both the requirements of the citizens’ assets and the attempts of compulsory conscription.
From some he argued as the “military” contribution to the Resistance has not been decisive for the collapse of the Gothic line built by the Germans to hinder the ascent of the peninsula by the allies and the Italian liberation body.
On the contrary, as is known, and 1944 had to demonstrate him, the forces of the axis on the pitch had difficulty in presiding over, at the same time, the areas towards which the allied forces and the internal areas were pressed more and more in the hands of the Resistance.
The warning addressed by Giuseppe Mazzini was listened to to the many who, at the time, confided in the intervention of the Alps: “More than the servitude, I fear the freedom delivered as a gift”.
The profound aspiration of the Italian people, after the wars of fascism, was peace.
The regime had made the Italians costume the war as a normal condition: not the war for life but life for war.
Resistance was the goal of achieving peace as a normal condition of relations between peoples.
At stake they were The reasons for life against the exaltation of the cult of deathplaced as a desperate delivery from the republican gangs.
Resistance grew in all European countries under Nazi domination.
The solidarity, capable of overcoming the legacy of the recent war events, was made its way from the common cause.
Even from the different resistances the idea of ​​the Europe of peoples was bornnow embodied by the popular sovereignty expressed by the Parliament of Strasbourg. Those who developed the idea of ​​united Europe, against the tragedy of nationalisms who had triggered the European civil wars, were anti -fascist exponents.
A name for everyone here in Genoa, that of Luciano Bolisexponent of the action party, hideously tortured by the black brigades in February 1945, miraculously survived. Silver medal for military valor, now rests in Ventotene, next to Altiero Spinelli.
Defending the freedom of European peoples is a shared task. Now, equality, the affirmation of the state of law, cooperation, the same freedom and democracy itself, have become common goods of the European peoples to be protected by all the contractors of the European Union’s Pact.
The freedom of the different homelands has become the liberation of Europe by those who claimed to submit it.
And it was such a true struggle that they also involved people that the Nazis demanded to the partisans.
Source: Vanity Fair

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