Centre-left opposition Democratic
Party (PD leader Elly Schlein on Saturday warned the government
against rewriting Italy's anti-fascist history.
Schelin was speaking after Senate Speaker Ignazio La Russa was
recently forced to apologise after saying that the SS troops
killed in a Rome partisans' attack that triggered the Ardeatine
Caves massacre were not Nazi soldiers but a harmless
semi-retired marching band, and that the episode was an
inglorious one for the Italian Resistance.
Speaking ahead of Liberation Day on April 25, when Italy marks
its WWII liberation form the Nazis and Fascists, Schlein did not
directly reference the La Russa incident but said: "On the eve
of 25 April I say this to this government, we will not allow
anyone to rewrite the anti-fascist history of this country".
"I do so with an emotional thought to our grandparents who in
this land with our grandmothers made a real resistance to
fascism," she added, "to the deprivation of freedom, to the
deprivation of the future that that past unfortunately caused,
and that someone today tries to dust off by making denial of
what happened."
Premier Giorgia Meloni said last week that that the furore
sparked by La Russa's controversial criticism of the Partisan
attack was resolved thanks to the Speaker's apology.
In condemning the 1944 Partisan attack in Via Rasella near the
Trevi Fountain as "not the noblest of acts" by the Italian
Resistance, La Russa had said the 33 northern Italian
naturalised German SS paramilitary police who died were members
of a harmless marching band, and not hardened Nazi soldiers.
The attack led to the Ardeatine Caves Massacre in which 335
anti-fascists were murdered as a reprisal.
"It was a mistake of institutional grammar that La Russa solved
on his own," Meloni told reporters at the Vinitaly fair in
Verona
"He apologized. It seems to me that the row is over".
However, calls continued to come from opposition politicians for
La Russa, a founder member of Meloni's right-wing Brothers of
Italy (FdI) party, and a proud collector of Mussolini
memorabilia, to resign from his role as Italy's second highest
institutional official.
A new work by the street artist Laika, meanwhile, appeared in
via Rasella, featuring a Nazi soldier playing a trumpet that
produces the word "Resignation".
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