Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of ...

The Italian post-war experience 241
However, the renewal of the political struggle between left and right
has been an issue in Italy at least since 1996. A post-Cold War division,
between those who wanted to rewrite history and those who defended its
anti-fascist origins, has been substituted for the dichotomy of amnesia and
nostalgic remembrance that characterised the previous era. Memories of
the Resistance are at the centre of the debate as much as before, but the
camps of the supporters and detractors have widened.
Carlo Ciampi, president of Italy since 1999, has shown a strong commitment
to his role of ensuring balance in national politics, something
he has been able to do because he is perceived as having no personal political
bias or agenda. Among the forms this commitment has taken has
been his approach to the celebration of national symbols in the form of
remembering the liberation of Italy and reviving in 2000 the celebration
of National Day on 2 June. In 1946 the Italians had on that date made
their choice between the monarchy and the republic, and it had then been
celebrated annually until 1977.
In 2000 Ciampi paid the customary visit on 25 April, the anniversary
of the liberation of Italy, to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier and
to the Fosse Ardeatine (where in March 1944 more than 300 Italians
were executed by the Germans as a reprisal for an attack on them by
Roman resistance fighters). More unusually, he also went to the village
of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in the Apuane Alps, where 560 civilians were
massacred by the Germans in 1944, and was the first president do so in
his official capacity. Previously, such a gesture would have been seen as
clashing with the desire to normalise Germany’s position in Europe and
within the Western bloc.
The following day Giorgio Bocca, a well-known Italian columnist and
himself a protagonist in the war of liberation, wrote against dishonest historical
revisionism in the daily La Repubblica. The headline of his article,
‘Italy without Memory Forgets the Partisans’, confirms a revival of the debate
on the Resistance whose tone non-Italians may find very difficult to
understand. Bocca has decided to remind the public of the role played by
the Resistance in ‘bridging the gap between fascism and democracy’ and
to recommend that this role should not again be forgotten or subjected to
unfair revisionism. The revival of the historical–political debate on what
prompted Italians in 1943 to choose either in favour of Mussolini and his
‘Republic of Salo’ or against him and for the liberation of Italy, does contribute
to a reassessment of the complexity of such a choice. Indeed, both
groups made their choice in the name of allegiance to the Italian nation. 22
22 See Paolo Mieli, Storia e Politica: Risorgimento, fascismo e comunismo (Milan: Rizzoli,
2001), and R. Vivarelli, La fine di una stagione: Memoria 1943–1945 (Bologna: Il Mulino,
2000).