Francesco De Gregori talks about the events that led to the killing of his uncle by Garibaldi's Gappisti

by Stefano Lusa – 29/09/2020 – Source: Radio Capodistria

He is one of the most important artists of Italian music, a poet-singer, who has often narrated the merits and defects of contemporary Italy. Francesco De Gregori, in an interview given to Robinson, the literary insert of Repubblica, returns to the story of his uncle, Commander Bolla, killed at Malga Porzus by communist partisans. The facts date back to February 1945, when Garibaldi's Gappisti liquidated 17 partisans of the Osoppo brigade of Catholic and secular-socialist orientation. All of this was already part of the fight for the future arrangement of the border and also in the ideological clash that would have wanted to expand the communist revolution. One of the darkest pages of the resistance, a source of controversy that went beyond and goes beyond the local context.

A wrong man in the wrong place, wrote journalist Giorgio Bocca about De Gregori’s uncle. A thesis that the singer doesn’t like.An absolutely ungenerous and superficial reading” he told the newspaper. De Gregori was not satisfied with the fact that his uncle was not a traitor. “I already knew this- He says - exactly the opposite had happened: his assassins could be defined as traitors, if anything, some of whom, after having been sentenced to various punishments in the post-war period, had escaped to Yugoslavia".

On the other hand, Commander Bolla was awarded the gold medal for military valor. He fell in “that tormented corner of Italy where the common patriotic spirit did not always succeed in uniting the forces of the Resistance in a single block,” as can be read in the motivation.

The story is taken up again today by Sandor Tence in the online edition of the Primorski Dnevnik. It is not the first time this year that Italian singer-songwriters have spoken about the eastern border. In June, Francesco Guccini, while telling the Corriere della Sera about his experience as a soldier in the Trieste area, had used the term “s'ciavi” to define the Slovenian community. This caused irritation and a stir, so much so that a few days ago Guccini apologized on the pages of the Primorski Dnevnik. This did not prevent the outbreak of a not-so-pleasant controversy in the Milanese newspaper, consisting of a back-and-forth of letters to the editorial office from readers.

Endless discussions and controversies, as often happens with everything that concerns the "eastern border". So even De Gregori's words do not go unnoticed.