by Elena Barlozzari – 07/02/2018

Rome – The book Foiba Rossa-Norma Cossetto: Storia di un'Italiana, the graphic novel included with Il Giornale starting today, was presented yesterday at the Chamber of Deputies.

Moderator of the event, war correspondent Gian Micalessin opened the round table with an image: that of the Basovizza foiba surrounded by barbed wire. A non-place where until a few decades ago access was forbidden and, with it, the memory of the desaparecidos of our history.

Norma Cossetto, thrown into the abyss of Villa Surani after being repeatedly raped by a gang of 17 Yugoslavian partisans, was one of them. And in part she still is, but from today a little less. "It's the first time that this Italian heroine is remembered in a comic strip," said the publisher Federico Goglio of Ferrogallico, and it's the first time that a testimony of this kind has managed to gain such visibility, arriving on all the newsstands in Italy." A sign of times that, after the long-awaited approval of the law that established the Day of Remembrance in 2004, are changing. "Thanks to important initiatives like these," according to the vice president of the Capitoline council, Andrea De Priamo. "It took forever," recalls the honorable Ignazio La Russa, then group leader of the National Alliance in the Chamber of Deputies: "I insisted until I was exhausted and, despite having the majority, it wasn't easy because some people saw it as a provocation." There were also men (certainly not right-wing) who were not stained by either denialism or justificationism: former president Ciampi awarded Cossetto the gold medal for civil valor and the rector of the University of Padua awarded her an honorary degree. Yes, because Norma did not have time to discuss her Istria Rossa. A thesis on the Istrian soil reddened by bauxite. And then also by blood.

Norma's end and how she was tied, hand and foot, by her tormentors was reported to her sister Licia by a woman who heard her calling for her mother and asking for water for hours. But she did not intervene out of fear. "Here is Licia, if she were here today she would be very happy," commented the second-generation exile Donatella Schurzel, moved. The national president Antonio Ballarin also echoed her. For the vice president of the Senate Maurizio Gasparri: "Norma Cossetto must be considered an Italian myth." And he suggests: "For the celebrations of February 10, why not choose the Quirinale, the home of Italians like Norma?" For Emanuele Merlino, vice president of the February 10 Committee and author of the screenplay, "memory is the action of memory that must become commitment. Telling Norma's drama means paying homage to her commitment to Italianness. Her sacrifice for an Italy that is not a geographical expression but a beacon of beauty and civilization."

Source: Il Giornale