A meeting recently took place in Udine between the President of the National League of Trieste, Paolo Sardos Albertini, and the President of the Osoppo Partisans Association from Udine, Roberto Volpetti.

The meeting was also attended by Professor Paola Del Din, who recalled the long-standing relationship between the historic Patriotic Association of Trieste (which recently celebrated the 130th anniversary of its foundation) and the Osoppo Partisans Association.

The meeting was an opportunity to discuss the activity programs that the two associations carry out. “The contexts in which the two Associations operate are undoubtedly different – ​​began Paolo Sardos Albertini – but the spirit with which they carry out their respective activities is convergent. There is one fact that I would like to underline, namely that the National League of Trieste, as well as the Osoppo of Udine, have a patriotic vision. The term patriotic is overused, but I refer to what Pope Wojtyla wrote in his last book “Memory and Identity”, published a few weeks before his death: “Patriotism is the weapon against nationalism”. “This in short is what seems crucial to us today, in a period in which it seems that nationalism is forcefully returning to the scene.”

"I share the considerations of my friend President Sardos Albertini - Volpetti stated - and this is what APO has tried to promote in recent years: a calm reflection, entrusted above all to serious historical research, to bring out what is there under the dust that the past decades have inevitably deposited. For too many years we have tried to hide what is evident and clear. A clear example was the historiography of the resistance: even today it is difficult to make people understand that the resistance or War of Liberation was not an almost exclusive heritage of the communist component alone. There was (and it was equally important) the contribution of the non-communist Resistance, as well as that of the soldiers interned in concentration camps, as well as obviously that of the allied armies and the Italian Liberation Corps. We must continue to work so that these truths emerge in an irrefutable and above all widespread way among scholars and students."

“What must move and guide us is a positive spirit,” continued Sardos Albertini, “because what drives us is the love for our history, our roots, our tradition, obviously within a context of strong acceleration, full of novelties and new scenarios. For example, I find that these years are extraordinarily important for reconnecting, resuming in a renewed way, relations with the Slovenian and Croatian worlds. These two peoples have certainly suffered the aggression of fascism, but much more so that of communism, from which they have been free for almost thirty years now. Now they too can reread the history of our border without the patterns imposed by ideological and political alignments.”

"In these years - Volpetti recalls - we have understood that in this corner of Europe of ours the three great conflicts that have crossed the entire twentieth century have been concentrated: the conflict between Nazi-fascism and anti-Nazi-fascism, the conflict between communism and anti-communism and national conflicts. The massacre of the Porzus mountain huts is there to testify to this in a sublime and incontestable way, so much so that incredibly the testimony of those eighteen people from Osoppo remains unchanged seventy-seven years later, indeed it finds ever greater space both in national historiography but above all in collective memory."

The two presidents agreed on the importance of continuing the collaboration between the two Associations, agreeing on the opportunity to extend the collaboration to other associations that share this ideal and cultural approach.

An important first milestone will be the upcoming publication of a book dedicated to the figure of Vinicio Lago, born in Trieste and a partisan with the Osoppo Brigade, killed in Udine on May 1, 1945, the day of Liberation, in circumstances that remained little known for decades, but that the in-depth research carried out by Andrea Legovini has rendered in their complete truth. The book will be published in the coming months and will also contain a testimony from the gold medalist Paola Del Din, who found herself experiencing first-hand the events that led to the tragic death of Vinicio Lago.

Source: National League