The Nazis tried to steal the bones of
Italy's greatest poet Dante Alighieri from his tomb in Ravenna
in 1944 but were thwarted when the Resistance helped a local
priest replace them with those of an unknown man, according to
an article written by the son and brother of two of the
protagonists that appears in Pen Italia Thursday, the author
said Wednesday.
In the article, written for the 700th anniversary of the Supreme
Poet's death, 87-year-old Sergio Roncucci says US spies alerted
the Resistance to Adolf Hitlers' order to grab the bones to be
housed in a grand new museum to be designed by regime architect
Albert Speer in Germany.
Roncucci's father Bruno and brother Giorgio helped local priest
and Dantist Father Giovanni Mesini and tomb guardian Antonio
Fusconi swap the bones on the night of March 22-23 1944, the
article says.
When Hitler realized what had happened he had other problems on
his agenda, the article says.
According to Roncucci, HItler had designs on the remains of some
of Europe's towering literary figures after Germany had
conquered Europe, including Cervantes, Zola, Molière, Tolstoy
and Shakespeare.
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