The Massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine. History, Myth, Ritual, and ...

I was always somehow bothered in the ceremonies, even though I didn’t have to stand
out, I could be anonymous in the middle of the people.
I didn’t have to go up to the
stage where the relatives were displayed, so? or somebody could look at me and say,
‘He is the son of one of the victims’. But those ceremonial words, those words, they
were so tired, and so tiresome.
And so it happened one day - and after that this is
what I always did -
I happened, one day, to go to the monument on a springtime
morning, at nine, when the monument opens to the public, and there’s nobody.
Now
you’ve seen it. The shrine is covered with a huge stone In the spring sometimes,
there are a few birds that sit there and sing. So sometimes I went there, said a prayer,
and I spoke … in a low voice, even though I was alone, to those dead, who I always
called ‘my boys’.
And if there is something which still makes me bitter, after all
these years, is that I was never able to go there one day and tell them, fully believing it.
‘Well, we made it. You made it’.
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