It was an emotional meeting between Agnese Pini, director of QN, La Nazione, Il Resto del Carlino and il Giorno, and Pino di Blasio, editor-in-chief of La Nazione Siena. Pini’s book “Autumn in August. The Nazi-Fascist massacre that affected my family. A love story when war is scary again. A private event that brought to light a universal theme; war and its aberrations.
“Agnese Pini voiced the memory of many, and she did so with extraordinary storytelling ability,” said Di Blasio, tracing the story of the book in parallel with Almodóvar and Penélope Cruz’s Madres Paralelas. In the investigative book, Pini tells the story of his great-grandmother, who was murdered in the summer of 1944, along with 158 others, at the hands of the Nazi fascists in San Terenzo Monti, a small town in Lunigiana. The author went in search of the stories of the dead in order to restore dignity to them and their families. “These were the stories I always heard from my grandmother, my mother and my aunt. Terrible stories, especially about children and women killed, because war awakens the most pathetic instincts. Just think of the images and stories of the war in Ukraine. because it must be said that the poorest always pay the price in wars,” the author said, “and very little is known about them and even less is said.” “I would just like to give you some numbers,” he continued. “In two years, 20,000 civilians were killed as a result of war crimes in Italy, half of them from Naples and below. Add to this the 40,000 deportees, of whom very few managed to return home. .On the Gothic line, a month and a half later, first a massacre takes place in Sant’Anna di Stazzema, and then in Marzabotto. During this period, 2,000 civilians were killed. Almost none of them received justice, not even a trial. Justice is important not in order to suffer less, but in order to give this death meaning, truth. And only the truth can give dignity.
Hence the desire to reopen a chapter that for many years was considered closed. For Agnese Pini, one cannot think of doubts about the importance of considering our Constitution explicitly anti-fascist, and one cannot help but look at the period of fascist twenty years with a truly common memory. The director also spoke about the history of women’s rights in our country. “Only eighty years ago did we begin to exist and be considered,” he said, “with universal suffrage.”
Federica Damiani