August 2nd 1980 - 2017 Attack at the Bologna Train Station We will never stop asking for the truth. This is why we want to remember. Every amnesia hides a partial amnesty: the erasure of guilt, of responsibility, but not of the pain of those who obstinately remember and request the truth. The truth on instigators, on accomplices, on those who could have spoken but chose silence and complicity. 37 years after the massacre at the Bologna train station on August 2nd, 1980, we do not renounce our civic duty to remember and to seek truth and justice. August 2 is constantly renewed: from Berlin to Paris, from Syria to Turkey, from Manchester to Kabul via St. Petersburg, London, and every part of the world where the base and barbarian violence of terrorism hits innocent people and spreads terror and despair. The Regional Legislative Assembly and the Association of the Victims’ Families strongly supported Cantiere 2 Agosto, an initiative that followed One Life, One Story, where postcards with the biographies of the eightyfive victims were handed out to the participants in the commemorative rally of August 2nd, 2016. This year, eightyfive narrators, following the stage directions of Matteo Belli and the historical guidance of Cinzia Venturoli, told the stories of the victims in different locations throughout the city. An immense popular storytelling and memory-building effort, a “cantiere” celebrating an active citizenship who cannot and will not forget. The initial search for volunteers was followed by a period of research and story writing. Each storyteller met twice with Matteo Belli, the director, who helped stage their narration. On August 2, 2017, from 11 am to 11 pm, each narrator told the story of one of the victims twelve times, starting at the same minute of every hour. Narrators were located in various parts of the city, thus creating an urban polyphony of stories issuing from natural stages, all different from one another. To all of them, Matteo Belli, Cinzia Venturoli, and all those who collaborated on this project we extend our heartfelt thanks. Paolo Bolognesi President Association of the Victims’ Families of the Attack at the Bologna Train Station on August 2nd, 1980 Simonetta Saliera President Legislative Assembly Emilia-Romagna Region Cantiere 2 Agosto: An Example of Public History Cinzia Venturoli In our work as historians and teachers, we often wonder about the most effective ways to comprehend and help our students comprehend what is a strage, a massacre. To understand such a complex and dramatic event, it is probably necessary to reveal the victims’ identities, their names, their histories, their dreams, so that we can appreciate that we could have been those people, we were those people. Their personal histories form the collective biography of our country; knowing and telling them helps us reconstruct a history that isn’t monolythic and abstract. It also helps us understand the strategy behind massacres of common people, that is to spread terror, insecurity, diffidence so as to facilitate the imposition of an authoritarian regime. Remembering and transmitting the memory, and the historical knowledge, of a massacre such as the one perpetrated on August 2nd, 1980, becomes a greater challenge every year, and every year a more necessary one. Memory provides an essential map to orient ourselves in the past, but especially to understand the present and plan for the future. It provides a guide that helps us find a place in our community. In traditional societies, eldelry people or storytellers transmitted this map through narration, from generation to generation. In the past, memory was nourished by oral traditions and rituals. In the present, however, the transmission of memory and history are more and more complex, monopolized by mass media, and manipulated by partisan efforts. The difficult transmission of memory often disorients young people, generating hostility and even rage, because they lack that necessary map, which would help them understand, decode, and even control and modify the present. We ask, then, how to tell stories that will regenerate the fabric of active citizenship, so that history may become shared heritage, owned by the city, by the people. Maybe we need to rediscover the storytelling of traditional societies; maybe we also need new storytellers whose voices will resound from the streets, crossroads, symbolic places, and everyday places. This was the challenge of Cantiere 2 Agosto: creating a network of stories and storytellers to generate a memory map. Cantiere 2 Agosto: An Introduction... After Matteo Belli The success that the great 2016 initiative One life, one story, the distribution of postcards with the biographies of the eightyfive victims, had both locally and nationally, encouraged us to think of a new project of popular storytelling. On August 2nd 2017, eighty-five narrators told eighty-five stories of the victims of the attack at the train station in Bologna. They were spread on eighty-five urban stages located in more than fifty different parts of the city. The narrators, all volunteers who had been recruited through social media and other available channels, undertook a period of study and writing, creating stories from existing documentary material, provided by the historian Cinzia Venturoli and by the archive of the Association of the Victims’ Families. Afterwards, we worked on the staging of each story. Our intention was not only to bring to life the memory of those who are no longer with us, but also to create a public encounter in which narrators would bear witness to crucial events in the past, sharing their knowledge in relation to a certain place in the present Thinking back about that day as I write means for me re-experiencing the emotions offered by a city that, during those hours, became for many a symbol of active citizenship, a lab for a worthier future. Witnessing the simple and natural connection between the narrators and their audience was like feeling the energy of a very human, heartbreaking sharing experience, where moments and places apparently removed from each other became connected by a deep resonance, which can only be achieved by sharing a profound feeling. Having watched all eighty-five performances, I will forever be convinced that the labor of love improves human beings, frees them from all preoccupations, and liberates their creativity. To those who collaborated on this great project as storytellers, guides, citizens who offered their places as stages, as well as professionals, associations and institutions who provided material help before and during August 2nd, 2017, and today with this publication, I extend my personal and sincerest thanks. August 1st, 2017: Matteo Belli’s Address to the Narrators Dear narrators, When on a morning in September 2016, in a Regional Assembly office, I was asked if I had a project to suggest for the August 2nd commemorative events, I remembered a field that I saw as a child, and the ruddy face of a construction worker who suddenly appeared shouting: “Inzgniiiiir!!!!”, calling at the top of his lungs an engineer who was there, like everyone else, to work on one of man’s greatest and most ancient dreams: the dream of flying. Those people were building an airport, the Guglielmo Marconi Airport in Bologna, and even though that day, as a child, I didn’t understand why in order to fly, human beings needed to dig holes in the ground, I saw very clearly that those people were there to build something that, despite their shouts and arguments, they all agreed upon. That worker was calling an engineer who, a few years later, would become the director of the airport, and he would be in that position even on June 27, 1980, when someone disrupted one of those dreams in the sky near Ustica: a plane to Palermo which had departed from the airport in Bologna. That man, whom everyone called ingegnere, was simply “dad” when he came home at night. He introduced me to the meaning of a cantiere: a construction site, a place where human beings work together towards a common goal. For this reason, when they asked me: “What project do you suggest for commemorating the train station attack next year?” I answered “Cantiere 2 Agosto: 85 Stories for 85 Stages.” This project received more than 230 applications from aspiring narrators, and over twenty applications from aspiring guides; our email account received well over a thousand messages, and we had about a thousand followers on Facebook; citizens offered their homes, their courtyards, their stores for the performances; businesses, associations, cultural and administrative institutions, community centers, cooperatives, professional and trade associations, and many others directly or indirectly followed the work of the Cantiere. The project was conceived in September and started in December, and someone already knows that it will last, as they volunteered in July for next year: “I already applied last year and wasn’t selected, so I am trying again”, and someone else added: “I heard that you are doing Cantiere 2 Agosto again.” From the very beginning, we wanted time to be the main factor in selecting narrators: first come, first served, or first welcomed. The project was supported by the Presidency of the Legislative Assembly of the Emilia-Romagna Region, in collaboration with the Association of the Victims’ Families of the August 2nd Attack. For this I want to personally thank the President of the Legislative Assembly Simonetta Saliera, the President of the Association of the Victims’ Families Paolo Bolognesi, and those who worked with us since the beginning to make this project possible: Nicoletta Grazia in the Families’ Association, and Luca Molinari, Sandra Cassanelli, Maria Teresa Schembri in the staff of the President of the Legislative Assembly; the Press office overseen by Marco Sacchetti, and the graphic designer Fabrizio Danielli, who created the paper map.