The embankment of memory

Memory is made up of moments and days that become years over time. It happens that memory fades, becomes a museum piece or even worse is forgotten. Yet, memory is us every time we learn something from the past. In this month we can do it by recalling the example of two priests who became blessed. Died with their people.
It was 19 September 1943: the town of Boves, in the province of Cuneo, experienced first-hand all the contradictions of the armistice of 8 September. State and military institutions in disarray, the German invasion of northern Italy, the birth of the Social Republic.

In Boves one of the first Italian partisan formations was formed under the command of the officer Ignazio Vian. That September 19 was a Sunday: Vian's men captured two German soldiers. A gesture that immediately led to the occupation of the town by the leaders of the SS. The parish priest Don Giuseppe Bernardi was summoned immediately.
The order was clear: either the release of the hostages or reprisal in the country. Word of honor: take it or leave it. Don Bernardi agreed to mediate and with the industrialist Antonio Vassallo reached the base of the partisan command in the mountains. After a long negotiation, the soldiers were freed, but the Germans went back on their words and unleashed a senseless fury on the civilians.

The balance was pitiless: 350 homes burned, 23 people killed, starting with Don Bernardi himself found charred together with Vassallo. Among the victims also the vice curate of the village, Don Mario Ghibaudo, just 23 years old, a priest for three months. During the roundup, Don Mario tried to help everyone, especially taking care of the elderly who found it more difficult to escape. He was killed just as he assisted one: shot by a German soldier who finally stabbed him.
It is this spending to the end that brought don Bernardi and don Ghibaudo to the altars, the symbols of one of the first Nazi massacres in Italy, with Boves at the center of new reprisals in the following months. So in many other Italian towns: the trail of blood of Sant'Anna di Stazzema, Vinca, Marzabotto…

Of that pain in Boves remains the memory, but also the choice to make the country's tragedy a testimony to the contrary: committing oneself to peace, sensitizing the new generations against the madness of war, making the past a warning for the present and the future . Not an easy challenge today, in complex times in which it is easy to be moved, but very difficult to reason. It is useless to hide it: after all we are used to living in peace, warming up in our security, considering certain tragedies far away. War in the first person does not concern us, it involves others, it kills far away.

Normal and even understandable, but a new sensibility is within our reach. If we learned to feel in the flesh the pain of those who preceded us, to have a broad and balanced look at history, we would have splendid keys to understanding those who continue to suffer the same abuses today: in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Africa, in every corner of the world where evil continues to run rampant. With these keys we could realize that evil does not win, because each of us can be a barrier.

Matthew Spicuglia
NP October 2022