thirty-four years old when they killed her husband. In a certain sense, she has never moved past that twenty-ninth of January.â They had left Milan for Pescara a few days after the murder, in silence. And in silence they remained for another quarter of a century. âToday weâre suffering from this rather disturbing Italianpeculiarity: former terrorists elevated to the status of philosophers, writing books, granting erudite interviews. A full-fledged cultural industry has been created and we are supposed to sit back and accept it.â
In the most audacious and horrifying crime of the Years of Lead, the former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on March 16, 1978, as he was being driven to Parliament. Eight weeks later, after long and fruitless negotiations, his bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car in central Rome. What is often forgotten is that the gunmen also murdered five members of Moroâs escort. Years later, on February 27, 2007, a TV special was broadcast titled
The Return of the Red Brigades
. In one part, the anchor, Claudio Martelli, interviewed the founder of the Red Brigades, Alberto Franceschini, at the scene of the crime on Via Fani in Rome. After decades of silence, the families of the fallen policemen wrote a letter to the columnist Corrado Augias of
La Repubblica
to describe their discomfort over that interview:
This scene took us back thirty years, to that terrible day when our lives stopped at the same time as those of our loved ones. We were horrified to see a terrorist standing next to the plaque that commemorates the massacre. We were disgusted to hear talk of the Red Brigades at that historic place, which should be sacred to the nation and to our collective memory. Lorenzo Contiâwhose father, Lando, the former mayor of Florence, was murdered by the Red Brigades in 1986âwent on a hunger strike to protest the presence of former terrorists in the government. The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, implored him to suspend the strike, saying: âI want our public opinion and our politicians to remember the gravity of the terrorist attacks on democratic institutions. And I want them to remember the men whodefended these institutions with courage, making the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.â Also in keeping with the head of stateâs remarks, we feel that it is indecent to film and present interviews of this type at commemorative sites.
In his response, Corrado Augias may have finally given the family members the understanding they were seeking.
What the letter says is perfectly true. After spending a few years in prison, terrorists implicated in the taking of human life are given back their freedom. On the release form is stamped, I believe, âtime served.â But the time of those whose husbands or brothers were murdered is never served, and it could never be stamped on a piece of paper. There is no getting past the disparity of treatment between those who killed and those who were killed. It goes on through the years, aggravated by the fact that the killers write memoirs, are interviewed on TV, participate in films, and occupy positions of responsibility, while no one goes to the widow of a police officer and asks her what life has been like without a husband, whether there are any children who grew up as orphans, whether the passage of time has healed the wounds, the mourning, the sorrow.
Why were they killed? Because of the dreams of a group of firebrands who were playing revolution, fooling themselves into thinking that they were the chosen ones, beautiful souls devoted to a noble utopia, without realizing that the true âchildren of the people,â as Pasolini called them, were on the other side, the targets of their ridiculous folly.
10.
a left-wing painter
I T TOOK A LEFT-WING PAINTER to get me to stop reading
Robinson Crusoe
twice a year. He picked it up and said, âThere are lots of other
In the most audacious and horrifying crime of the Years of Lead, the former prime minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the Red Brigades on March 16, 1978, as he was being driven to Parliament. Eight weeks later, after long and fruitless negotiations, his bullet-riddled body was found in the trunk of a car in central Rome. What is often forgotten is that the gunmen also murdered five members of Moroâs escort. Years later, on February 27, 2007, a TV special was broadcast titled
The Return of the Red Brigades
. In one part, the anchor, Claudio Martelli, interviewed the founder of the Red Brigades, Alberto Franceschini, at the scene of the crime on Via Fani in Rome. After decades of silence, the families of the fallen policemen wrote a letter to the columnist Corrado Augias of
La Repubblica
to describe their discomfort over that interview:
This scene took us back thirty years, to that terrible day when our lives stopped at the same time as those of our loved ones. We were horrified to see a terrorist standing next to the plaque that commemorates the massacre. We were disgusted to hear talk of the Red Brigades at that historic place, which should be sacred to the nation and to our collective memory. Lorenzo Contiâwhose father, Lando, the former mayor of Florence, was murdered by the Red Brigades in 1986âwent on a hunger strike to protest the presence of former terrorists in the government. The President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, implored him to suspend the strike, saying: âI want our public opinion and our politicians to remember the gravity of the terrorist attacks on democratic institutions. And I want them to remember the men whodefended these institutions with courage, making the ultimate sacrifice of their lives.â Also in keeping with the head of stateâs remarks, we feel that it is indecent to film and present interviews of this type at commemorative sites.
In his response, Corrado Augias may have finally given the family members the understanding they were seeking.
What the letter says is perfectly true. After spending a few years in prison, terrorists implicated in the taking of human life are given back their freedom. On the release form is stamped, I believe, âtime served.â But the time of those whose husbands or brothers were murdered is never served, and it could never be stamped on a piece of paper. There is no getting past the disparity of treatment between those who killed and those who were killed. It goes on through the years, aggravated by the fact that the killers write memoirs, are interviewed on TV, participate in films, and occupy positions of responsibility, while no one goes to the widow of a police officer and asks her what life has been like without a husband, whether there are any children who grew up as orphans, whether the passage of time has healed the wounds, the mourning, the sorrow.
Why were they killed? Because of the dreams of a group of firebrands who were playing revolution, fooling themselves into thinking that they were the chosen ones, beautiful souls devoted to a noble utopia, without realizing that the true âchildren of the people,â as Pasolini called them, were on the other side, the targets of their ridiculous folly.
10.
a left-wing painter
I T TOOK A LEFT-WING PAINTER to get me to stop reading
Robinson Crusoe
twice a year. He picked it up and said, âThere are lots of other
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