From Sicily to Piedmont: the Story of a Partisan Commander
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Vincenzo Modica “Petralia” From Sicily to Piedmont: the Story of a Partisan Commander Translation: Nick Crofts – who had the idea and translated the introduction and chapter 1; Vicky Franzinetti – who finished the translation. 1 (caption) Turin, May 1945- The Liberation Parade- Commander Petralia is marching bearing the flag of the Corpo volontari della libertà (the Freedom Fighters’ Volunteers) (Istoreto Archive) 2 AUTHOR’S NOTE This book is dedicated to my dear and beloved granddaughters Camilla and Martina and to all young people so that they may become acquainted with a page of Italy’s history In writing this story of mine I would like to thank all those who I owe lasting and unwavering gratitude who contributed to my liberation and healing after I was taken prisoner. A special thanks to Sister Felicita of the Immacolata Hospital in Pinerolo and to the messengers (staffette) Sara and Nicoletta who organised my escape from the hospital with the partisan Bertotto. I also wish to thank the Rector of the Cotogno Sanctuary, the Reverend don Bartolomeo Stobbia, who was the first one to shelter and hide me with great warmth and help. My warmest recollection to Miss Bollati’s family for having looked after me and nursed me back to health in the Notary’s house in Vilalfranca Piemonte. I would also like to thank the Rivoira brothers and sisters who hid me in their farm in La Morra in spite of the Fascists and specifically of Captain Novena. I wish to that the Colombo brothers and Dr Fontana who treated my wounds regardless of the risks created by the enemy. Thanks to young Franco Merletti who helped me with my computer. A special thanks to my friend and partisan comrade Nullo (Bruno Pasquali) who helped me research some events that took place in the Po Valley. Lastly, I would like to thank to the Piedmontese Institute for research on the Resistance and on contemporary society (ISTORETO) and especially to Prof Boccalatte who supplied me with many of the documents. Vincenzo Modica «Petralia» 3 The more the generations, the harder it is to pass memories down to the next one. It feels as if the process had been suddenly interrupted as if the older generations no longer partook the same life horizons. As if their experience could only be told excluding those who were not present and unable to share events. ‘When the landscape of shared knowledge is lost – wrote Aledia Assmann – communication between generation and eras breaks down’. Narration is not easy especially when it refers to a totalising experience such as the Resistance. Participants in the Resistance Movement tend to consider it a unique experience that cannot and will not be repeated, an appointment with history which meant their youth took on a historic meaning, as if it had deprived them of the personal dimension of memory and had condemned them to the role of bearing public, institutional memories for ever. As a result the tone of many former partisan narratives is imbued with this meaning and often the use of the first person singular or plural seems to deliberately make those who were born later feel uneasy, as if understanding events were precluded to them simply because they were not there. Petralia died in Turin on the 9th of January 2003. His story is extraordinary, precisely because it is unlike other similar stories, stemming more from the need to have an exchange with others than from the urge to write his autobiography, as if he were letting memories surface following questions, rather than answering with the fragments of well-preserved self- representation. His book offers a clear and detailed memoir, a fascinating tool to develop historical knowledge: not a ‘monument’ but a live document deeply influenced by the existential side of his complex and fascinating character. Giovanni De Luna 4 PREFACE Vincenzo Modica’s autobiographical narrative as Petralia, the Partisan Commander, is part of a genre which has never been sufficiently explored. In fact the Resistance told by professional historians lacks that emotional nuance which only witnesses can offer, a role which Modica can play to the full, at times with that spontaneity of someone new to writing, shedding the light of truth (verism) on each step of his youth: he started off as a student, then became a partisan fighter. The book starts with a detailed chronology of the events leading to the Resistance, very precious information which helps us appreciate the value of the experience of a young Sicilian who was fated to become a symbol in the moral dissolution of the country after September the 8th 1943. Vincenzo Modica left his parents’ home, a rather quiet farm, and pursued his love for study, proceeding on impulse as all scholars do. However, the future held events not written into his books. World War 2 broke out while he was still a young student. As expected in a the country under the circumstances, he ended up by joining up and starting a military career. He was in Pinerolo in Northern Italy on that terrible September the 8th , far from his homeland in Sicily where the Anglo-American forces had already landed moving the front up beyond. In the South they were already breathing a post war air, as behind the frontlines there were no Nazi Fascists and their thoughts were already projected into the future, to a democratic homeland. Things were very different in the North which had become a land of Nazi conquest and order based on terror and death. It is at that point the Vincenzo Modica, the Cavalry officer, felt his contribution to the renaissance of his homeland was to find a place more among those rebels who then became known as partisans. An increasing number of Southern Italians joined and recognised him as their leader, a leader sent by fate. In fact his military skills blended with the wisdom from his family made him a precious ally for Commander Barbato with whom he was able to give a meaning to his training in managing the group of resistants. Together, their experience developed in a war that had to be understood if not invented, as they dealt with unexpected events which the book lists in a detailed manner for the 18 lawless months, where danger was everywhere. The men in arms were (we were) the generation of young men who had grown up in the Fascist era, making us unlikely candidates for a baptism of fire. Modica took a nom de guerre (Petralia) as did Commander Barbato. Together they turned those badly armed youngsters into an efficient partisan Garibaldi Unit able to perform that dirty job, the war, seriously, committedly and enthusiastically. His narration leads us to the occupation of Turin by the partisans who marched triumphantly behind their Commander Petralia, flag 5 bearer of a famous Italian three coloured flag. His arm is in a sling because of a recent wound and as he bears the flag with his good arm one guesses how his being a Southern Italian and a Northern partisan represented the newfound unity of Italy. This is not enough to explain why this book was written more than half a century after the Liberation, a thread which connects the various events; it speaks of his desire not to emerge personally but to address those times with realism after decades of a number of politicians and historian using the partisan struggle for their own aims. Resistence and not a civil war: this is why. Unquestionably, reading Dalla Sicilia al Piemonte (From Sicily to Piedmont) one discovers how people belonging to different groups or strata of the population understood that the historical change that led to so many people to take the leap and seek freedom, and that one had to pay and fight even at risk of one’s life. The Nazis felt hounded and pushed back on all fronts which made it even fiercer. The Government of the Fascist Republic of Salo’ was a puppet theatre attracting those Italians who thought they could re-found Fascism not having understood what was happening. They were under the Nazis’ fist and therefore did not represent Italy in any way, they were merely sad figures lacking an image and imagination, at the beck and call of the foreigner. Fighting against the Nazis also implied fighting their lackeys, servants who stood for Germany as it was then. The Resistance was both a healthy form of patriotism and a war of liberation. Here is book that can be read, its historical references and the copies of documents consulted to better understand how the history of the Resistance is a cultural heritage which belongs to all the people of Italy. Felice Malgaroli 6 INTRODUCTION A young Sicilian born and bred under Fascism, a Pinerolo cavalry officer who was changed into Commander Petralia by the events that took place on September the 8th 1943, Pompeo Colajanni’s (Barbato’s) deputy when he led the 1st Garibaldi Partisan Division. This is the story of Vincenzo Modica, born in 1919 in Mazara del Vallo in the western tip of Sicily. It is both an ordinary and an extraordinary story, mixing every day and exceptional events, as happened to so many of the interwar generation. Born into a family of small landowners, Vincenzo Modica completed his secondary education in 1938 and then enrolled at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies (Istituto orientale) of the University of Naples. As all the young people of his time, he grew up in the Balilla (the Young Fascists’ Organisation), the avanguardisti older youths (the Vanguardists), and was imbibed in values such as the Regime’s definitions of homeland and nation.