The rancor that the National Association of Italian Partisans has dedicated to the commemorations of Norma Cossetto, an Istrian student raped and then thrown into a sinkhole by Yugoslavian communist partisans in the terrible days following the political, military and institutional collapse of Italy following September 8, is shocking.

Immediately after the institution of the Day of Remembrance with L. 92/2004 there were moments of civil confrontation between the associations of the Adriatic diaspora (with the support of the President of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia, Senator Lucio Toth) and the ANPI, with particular reference to the complicated intertwining that took place on the eastern Italian border in the final phase of the Second World War between anti-fascism, patriotism, communism and the expansionist ambitions of Tito's Yugoslavia. In recent years, the ANPI has become harsher in tone, controversies against February 10 have arisen and dialogue has no longer been sought, paradoxically at a time when, for anagraphic reasons, the ranks of the veterans of the Resistance struggle have thinned and the ANPI has opened membership to people who share its values. It seems that these new generations, who grew up far from the civil war and in a peaceful and democratic Italy, are the main ones responsible for a campaign of hatred against those who work to make the tragic events of the Adriatic Italianity a heritage of national history.

How can one oppose, as the ANPI did in Pescara and Assisi, a toponymic dedication to a Gold Medal for Civil Merit awarded by the President of the Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (a sincere patriot and, yes, a partisan fighter) to Norma Cossetto? How can the ANPI, a spiteful "guardian of memory" according to the definition of Giampaolo Pansa, teach the values ​​of the Constitution in schools thanks to a protocol signed with the MIUR when it increasingly contests the anniversaries of the Day of Remembrance (a civil holiday established by law of the Republic) and the commemorations of our fellow citizens who were massacred or disappeared into thin air?

Renzo Codarin