Partisans: There was no time for fear

I crossed a vast plain, through foggy landscapes and mountains of memories as bright as stars, to learn about a dark period of Italian history; the resistance. I encountered men and women a century old, who fought for a common ideal, the ideal of anti-fascism. The stories that I have been told, yes they are stories from different times, but for many others are unlike everyday life under the brutality of injustice and tyranny; for such reason, I intend to expose the stories that I have heard, to remember that every conquest doesn’t last forever and that to RESIST is a necessity, to defend what others want to take from us. The Italian Resistance begun during the Second World War, right after the Armistice of Cassibile on the 8th September 1943, and lasted until the liberation of Italy on 25th April 1945. The resistance was a chapter in Italian history where clandestine political-military movements joined together in order to fight the Axis powers. The resistance was also fought alongside the famous “Italian Campaign”, when the allied forces had reached the hot Sicilian coasts on the 10th of July 1943, declaring the beginning of Italian liberation. In fact, the allied armies and the partisan brigades often joined forces to fight back against the axis powers, as they were still in control of many cities behind the well known Gothic Line. I wanted to expose and give voice to these people that were the main characters in this epic moment of Italian history, linking images from the past and present, to portray a resistance imagery. I focused on the town of Reggio Emilia, highlighting its important role in the fight against Nazi-Fascism, telling its stories and some of its tragic events. Most of the regions in the north of Italy, and especially the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, were the main theatre for the fight, where partisans fought night and day alongside the allied forces to free Italy from the oppressors. The town of Reggio Emilia was later decorated with the gold medal of military value, together with many of its citizens (the Cervi Brothers and Don Pasquino Borghi). The nation lost about 44,700 members of partisan brigades, and leaving roughly 21,200 war invalids. Many leaders of the partisan movements were also the first to form part of the Constitutional Assembly, meaning that the people who were inspired by the ideals of justice and antifascism made a crucial contribution to the realization of the Italian Republic and its Constitution.