Original subtitles

This film of partisan struggle and national rebirth is dedicated

to all in Italy who have suffered and fought the Nazi-Fascist oppression.

September 8, 1943 - a day of mourning.

The shameful flight of Italy's leaders let war pass over the nation,

dropping the Italian people into the grip of German oppression,

and leaving them to grope directionless in the darkness.

But soon this dark night gives way to the dawn of striking back.

And all over Italy the dawn illuminates struggles of resistance and acts of war.

After 20 years of servitude,

the Italian people spontaneously reclaim the path to rebirth.

In Italy, while reactionary groups were colluding with Germans and Fascists,

the partisan brigades arose...

everywhere, as here - in the plains of Ravenna and in the Apennine mountains.

How did they arise spontaneously, these partisan movements?

Not for personal adventure, but starting as groups organized

for defense and resistance, then gradually coalescing into action units.

Who are these partisans? What is their face?

In this documentary film, we can only show a few brief episodes,

some glimpses, sewing together the few photographs we have,

which are sketchy but taken from real life.

# Mountain by mountain by valley we fight, #

# so we can still proudly shout #

# with a stronger heart: #

# "Long live Italy!" #

Here's this partisan guy.

His sister Natalina Vacchi and several other female workers

headed the massive strike in her factory in March 1943,

in solidarity with the workers of northern Italy,

and she was arrested.

On August 25, in Ravenna, she is condemned to be hanged,

after witnessing the shooting of another 10 victims,

and the hanging of a GAP [Partisan Action Groups] member.

Throughout the day, as in pilgrimage,

people passed in front of the victims left exposed to the sun,

in mockery, by the cowardly Nazi-Fascists,

who had hurriedly abandoned the place.

It is a fact among a thousand,

in a story of savage reprisals,

roundups, burning of houses and villages

manhunts...

shooting of defenseless peasants,

guilty of having aided and assisted their partisan brothers.

Here is a Fascist documentary,

brazenly showing a roundup by the notorious Black Brigades.

But the faces of these youths remain calm.

Faith is not destroyed in their hearts.

Outlaws and bandits, they called them.

They invited them to consider, to come out from the woods.

But the partisans remained, in thickets and on the mountains.

and the peasants and workers resisted in their homes.

COMMUNIQU� - The High Commissioner has not invoked his right of pardon

and has confirmed the above death sentences.

The Special Tribunal for public safety.

...the ruling was executed by firing squad...

...of death...

BEWARE!

The Brigade sees you, hears you and will punish you.

The path of Italian rebirth is strewn with corpses.

Thousands of dead.

We see here...

an example of the sacrifice of all, Giorgio Lab�.

The origin of the partisan war

can be traced to 20 years of resistance of the Italian people,

to the 4,000 who died in the streets

in order to resist Fascism's road to power in 1922,

to the 100,000 prisoners confined and exiled over those sad 20 years,

to the Garibaldi Brigade of Spain,

where the outlines of future partisan struggles were created,

to the great strikes of March 1943

that cracked the foundations of the fascist edifice,

to the glorious insurrection of the Four Days of Naples of October '43,

that sent the Germans fleeing.

The spontaneous movement of the people is outlined and organized

by the parties of the National Liberation Committee

which pass the watchwords through the clandestine press.

Over the front line, in the occupied country,

the partisan movement grows and extends.

They are in the mountains,

where so much Italian history took place over the centuries,

from the Franciscan hermitages to the meetings of the Carbonari,

to the vanguards of Garibaldi.

And down in the valley, in depopulated villages,

there are houses, women, old people and children.

The life of the villages is paralyzed.

Women, old people and children...

from the mountain camps, the combatants' thoughts are with them.

In this cooperation between people and partisans,

in the unity of the nation,

the struggle for freedom lives and grows.

Italy is a country of mountains,

of heights and abysses,

of painful falls, sometimes,

but always of indomitable resurrections.

Our mountainous country, where mountains cover 40% of the land,

is favorable to partisan warfare,

with its special three-dimensional tactics,

movements on both sides of the divide,

the visibility from above, like eagle nests,

the quick focus on planned objectives.

Increasingly organized into real military formations,

into brigades and divisions,

the partisans operate with modern guerrilla warfare techniques:

rapid actions of sabotage on a grand scale,

which hinder enemy movements.

They cut the main arteries of communication.

They paralyze railway lines. They mine and blow up bridges.

And finally comes the time

when the enemy can be faced openly in war.

Here it is: groups of henchmen from the enemy army

surrender to the first partisan brigades.

Faced with this solidarity of the Italian people,

which in unity has found the way to regain its freedom,

German pride collapses.

Perhaps the prisoners are already thinking of the tragic futility

of the massacres and devastations.

BELIEVE OBEY FIGHT

Meanwhile, as puppets of a mad carnival of blood,

the Germans with their Fascist servants keep moving.

Funeral march of destruction.

MANY ENEMIES MUCH HONOR

WE'LL GO ON NO MATTER WHAT [Mussolini]

Operatic salutes

convey the buffoonery of the Fascist congress of Verona.

Here they are, the conceited officials, incompetent, gesticulating and fierce:

Alessandro Pavolini,

Dollmann, Buffarini-Guidi,

Graziani.

The song of betrayal resounds...

but the voices are out of tune and desperate.

All around, destruction, retaliation and arson.

Hundreds of ships destroyed... an entire fleet.

Hundreds of airplanes.

Miles and miles of rails.

Thousands of railroad cars.

Hundreds of factories.

Hundreds of power plants.

The fruits of the hard work of a poor people

are being systematically destroyed,

houses, razed and burned,

women and children, besieged and hungry.

This is the tragic legacy that Fascism left to the Italian people.

Deceitful manipulator of the love of country.

In this despair and tyranny,

the clandestine anti-Fascist press

mobilizes the strength of the Italian people.

How many have risked their lives

to compile, print and distribute those glorious papers?

How many typography workers have risked their lives?

How many brave women of the people have risked their lives?

Obscure, heroic female workers of the clandestine press,

which is an act of accusation against the traitors,

a death sentence on the enemies of the country.

And as partisans are fighting in the mountains and countryside,

in the cities, with the great mass actions and strikes,

action groups are being organized, GAP and SAP [Patriotic Action Squadrons]

to sow terror and chaos in the Nazi hordes and Fascist gangs.

The Italian people will not forget the bravery of the workers,

peasants and intellectuals.

Struggles at every hour, by any means and without quarter.

Italians will not forget the fallen of March 24.

Killed in the dark of the Fosse Ardeatine, the 320 martyrs

were victims of an unjustifiable act of retaliation and terrorism.

Their heartfelt remembrance

joins the many, many victims of the German Moloch.

Fosse Ardeatine,

Mauthausen, Majdanek,

Buchenwald...

In Italy and Europe, everywhere, every city, every country,

has had its death camps.

Bloody stages for the recovery of freedom.

The clandestine L'Unit� reports the partisan war communiqu�

on the Via Rasella action.

Statement by the Command of the Patriotic Action Groups [GAP].

2) All actions of G.A.P. are true acts of war

that hit exclusively German and Fascist military targets...

In broad daylight, in Rome.

A common garbage cart is loaded with high-powered explosives.

A GAP sentry is lurking in the silent street.

And here come the German SS, singing a rogue's song,

the executioners, the torturers.

They throw themselves on the ground.

And here on the ground are 30 SS who will never rise again.

And in the street, pockmarked by bullets from GAP fighting,

the German reaction is raging against the defenseless people.

The shame of the Stefani communiqu� in the fascist press.

"German command has ordered that for every German killed,

ten Communist-Badoglian criminals will be shot.

This order has been carried out." - Stefani

The house on Via Tasso, police torture center,

and the Regina Coeli prison with death row.

Attention! Attention!

resounds the German call.

The bestial revenge empties the prison cells.

Mazzini Enrico.

Norma Fernando.

Conti Edmondo.

More later!

A police officer has made a horrible double-play,

substituting the names of ten Jews on the list of condemned hostages.

This will not make people forget the extermination of millions of Jews

in the German death camps.

Fosse Ardeatine [Ardeatine Caves].

At night, along the evocative road leading to the [Fosse] quarries,

after the infamous count,

victims are drawn to the site of the massacre,

to a martyrdom equal to that of the early Christian martyrs.

And in the darkness of the quarry reappears the sign of all human pain

and of redemption.

With criminal obtuseness,

the Germans thought they could hide their ruthlessness

by blowing up the quarry entrances.

So discovering the victims was especially difficult

and required careful searches of the tunnels.

RECOGNITION UNIT

Objects from the dead are collected for identification.

The forensic police used every means for this difficult task.

Even a piece of cloth can give to a father

tragic confirmation of the sacrifice of his son.

Who are the perpetrators of this carnage?

Maeltzer.

Dollmann.

Caruso. And many other vampires.

Here's the chest with the stolen objects

that police chief Caruso tried to take with him in flight.

But this butcher will not benefit from the price of this blood.

The Caruso trial at the Palace of Justice.

Relatives of the victims are summoned.

The people want justice.

But justice is slow,

and often the connivance of accomplices enters the picture,

enabling the escape of some people awaiting trial,

as in the case of General Roatta.

These demoralizing connivances

and these attempts to sabotage justice

are responsible for the popular explosion

that led to the painful episode of Carretta,

Fascist and former director of the Regina Coeli prison,

who received the crowd's revenge.

It was a single episode.

But the blood of even one man not properly judged is too much.

In documenting this sad, violent episode,

we must not forget that some men in this crowd

courageously tried to oppose the lynching,

in particular a worker of the tramway union.

Courageous and firm voices of the sons of the Italian people.

To them go our thanks.

Protected by cordons of Carabinieri,

Caruso is taken to the Palazzo Corsini for the trial.

The High Court is preparing for the trial.

I see he's not here.

Here are the main figures of the trial.

Caruso, former head of the fascist police,

and Occhetto, his aide.

And here is Occhetto's lawyer Libotte, conversing with judge Maroni.

Caruso's lawyer Spezzano.

Berlinguer, prosecutor.

Pollock, chief of allied police.

Some judges.

Here is the fatalistic mask of Caruso and the restless face of Occhetto.

The trial opens, not with women in mourning,

but before a strange, restricted audience where one's eye

could not confuse the undercover policemen with members of the press.

The parade of prosecution witnesses,

police officers who worked under Caruso,

and now denounce the many misdeeds of this murderer

in the service of the Germans.

The normal course of a sensational trial:

confrontations between a relentless prosecution and a defense striving

in the desperate task of exonerating the criminals.

Police chief Morassini,

who succeeded Caruso after the liberation of Rome.

Hour by hour, Caruso feels the inexorable weight of his offences.

His face betrays anxiety.

A bishop, witness for the defence.

The High Commissioner, Berlinguer, speaks for the prosecution.

...our own armies... ...all the free peoples of the earth...

...even our Code...

...even our heroic partisans...

...watched by the whole civilized world,

which wants to know if Italy can free herself,

can redeem herself, with her own strength.

You will give this response. You will see...

the reasons that I have also told to the people, with whom

we have drawn close, whose voice we must always listen to,

and that I don't hesitate to repeat here to you,

even in the majesty of this courtroom,

so that no one will ever again attempt

to sacrifice the liberties of the people,

and the supreme values,

and the same human dignity of the Italian people,

the very existence

of our country, for a lust for power,

for prey and for blood.

You will give this response to our brothers

who are waiting, who suffer...

A chilling wind of death blows

during the reenactment of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre.

...to all renegades, to all the traitors, to all fratricides.

And believe me, if we can, with our work,

save the life of even a single one...

make even one shiver with terror... save the life...

The dead of the Ardeatine, as he recounts them,

are present in the courtroom.

...well, we can say then that we have entirely accomplished our duty.

And for Caruso and Occhetto, I conclude by asking capital punishment.

Berlinguer has called for the capital punishment for both defendants.

Caruso's lawyer Spezzano uses the most skilful techniques

to evoke in the minds of the jurors a mercy

that, if separated from justice, is a moral fault.

...if in this trial there may be

still a voice of compassion...

Lest it be wet with human blood

this our land so beautiful and so battered,

and because a human creature

can be redeemed

by remorse, by atonement,

by repentance, by deprivation of freedom,

by the joy of seeing every now and then his children,

because instead Caruso is there,

for a long time

in detention.

But the real reason to apply imprisonment

is because his guilt, the guilt of a human creature,

may be redeemed through the ordeal of a long, hard atonement.

So, gentlemen, we suspend the hearing.

But, actually...

...for one hour. At 2:30 we resume...

During the consultations, the entire courtroom stirs feverishly,

anticipating the rightful verdict.

Attorney Libotte, defender of Occhetto,

has been on the podium for three hours and doesn't miss anything

to snatch his client from death.

...if you have listened, I have not done any vain oratory.

I am one of those lawyers who cannot do flights of fancy.

I fly very low, grazing the ground.

This means that I do not move away from the trial, I live the trial,

I make it live again, in front of the judge,

who must examine the human fact on which he must deliver judgment.

I spoke to your sense of justice...

Occhetto, meanwhile, automatically draws strange figures.

...I spoke simplistically, I spoke modestly,

but with elements drawn from the trial.

And it is with this, your lordships, that I have the right, without doing

emphatic conclusions,

to appeal to your judgment and,

in taking leave of this most excellent court,

I close my speech with

the consciousness

of having done everything possible to fulfill my duty.

The High Court has decided.

Judge Maroni is preparing to give the verdict.

In the name of His Royal Highness Umberto of Savoy,

Prince of Piedmont, Lieutenant General of the King.

The High Court of Justice for sanctions against Fascism,

in the criminal proceedings against

Pietro Caruso, son of Cosimo, and Occhetto Roberto, son of Umberto,

accused as cited in the record,

according to Articles 5 and 7, law 27 July 1944,

number 159/488, Penal Code,

declares Caruso Pietro, son of Cosimo,

and Occhetto Roberto, son of Umberto,

guilty of the crime ascribed to them,

with extenuating circumstances towards Occhetto alone.

And as a consequence it condemns

Caruso Pietro to the death penalty by firing squad in the back and

Occhetto Roberto to 30 years in prison and the costs of the trial.

It orders the publication of the judgment, by abstract,

on all the daily newspapers of the capital.

The hearing is closed.

Excellency, I reserve the right to submit an application for pardon.

September 23

Caruso gets off the wagon.

April 27 Federico Scarpato.

Here is Scarpato,

the informer who created so many victims in his sinister career.

June 5 Pietro Koch.

Koch,

the torturer of the sadly famous guesthouses Oltremare and Jaccarino,

macabre branches of Via Tasso in Rome,

who continued his horrific deeds in Milan.

Death to the Fascists!

This cry is from a woman who recognized her son at the Fosse Ardeatine.

The just punishment for the crimes committed

brought down those most directly responsible.

Solemn, pondered justice

is the best antidote against explosions of revenge.

The weakness of Sirei [?] is responsible for the slaughter of the innocents.

The women of the martyrs recall their loved ones.

Women of Italy, women of the people, strong and without drama,

calm in their sorrow.

You haven't seen... - I haven't seen anything, sir.

Only the clothes all stained with blood,

I couldn't see anything but bandages, cotton wool, alcohol, nothing more.

When they took my son in law, who was in the house,

we wanted to go with him.

The German threw us back and while leaving, he wanted to take us too,

to arrest us too. So then

I told him "So you didn't come to search the house, you've come to steal!"

So he gave me a slap that made me fall head over heels.

This woman recalls how, waiting to become a mother,

she vainly turned to Koch, begging him.

...but he never came.

Five days after giving birth, I left and went to the police station,

with this little one, and I could not even take a step.

I got there at Via Principe Amedeo, on day 23, after lunch,

and I was told that he could not get out.

And later, on the morning of the 24th, I went to him and told him so.

And he says "Okay, it will be a matter of a few days."

I showed him the baby, and he was delighted that a baby was born.

This mother saw her sick son snatched from the sanatorium.

...at 6 AM they went to the hospital Forlanini.

They check if he's at the Forlanini, my son was studying,

he was in the 3rd year of university, and had exams when he'd go out...

They say, "What, are you in bed?" No, see, I'm studying, I have a cold."

"We came to pick up that bomb" "The bomb? You're crazy! I don't have a bomb."

"Come on, pull out this bomb!" "But I gave it to Stelvio",

another friend they arrested with him, then released.

"Let's go see Stelvio." My son, poor creature, when he comes out of the door,

he sees two SS murderers with machine guns on their shoulders.

# Red with blood and full of glory #

# we will smile in viewing life again. #

# On the batllefield will rise the new Italy #

# with the guerrilla. #

# On the batllefield will rise the new Italy #

# with the guerrilla. #

# For all these unavenged victims, #

# for all these skeletal faces, #

# we will give back from the barricades #

# bullet for bullet! #

The 320 are not dead by accident, victims of the whims of ruthless police.

They are fighters of the clandestine struggle

who have serenely accepted their fate.

"No one, however, has realized the truth, that I am an Italian,

I am a patriot, one who is ready to shed his blood for his country."

So wrote one of the victims in a letter that was found on him.

The Mass of the dead for freedom.

The same Mass on the mountain, with the partisans.

They have died fighting by the thousands,

and they rest on our mountains, in the countryside and in the cities,

piously buried by their comrades, Italian or allies,

united in the common struggle.

After its liberation,

Rome celebrates on February 18 the day of the partisan and the soldier,

a day of national solidarity and volunteering for war.

Aids and arms supplies are being organized

to nourish the faith and spirit of the fighters of the people.

The Union of Italian Women offers the flag to the Volunteers of Liberty.

The crowd listens to Minister Mauro Scoccimarro,

who points out the way to national rebirth.

Let's raise up high

the flag of the Volunteers of Liberty,

banner of the new Risorgimento,

symbol of the rebirth of the homeland.

Let's give with it the salute to the armies of all countries

who are fighting against the slavery of Nazism,

for the freedom and independence of peoples.

In front of it,

in the name of all our dead,

we swear to clear from our country,

the dishonor and shame of Fascism,

and to win back for Italy, free and independent,

the esteem and respect of all the free people of the world.

Long live Italy!

Soldiers of the Liberation Corps, fighting alongside the Allies,

and Volunteers of Liberty, namely partisans,

are fighting a single war, on this side or beyond the front line,

and form a single army.

General Alexander bestows the partisan leader Boldrini,

nicknamed Bulow, with the Medal of Valor.

The Italian youth leaves for the front.

The partisans have spent all winter in the mountains, resisting and fighting,

although General Alexander had invited them

to return to their homes during the terrible winter weather,

and despite the roundups of the Germans and Fascist Black Brigades.

Throughout the winter, actions of harassment, sabotage, ambushes.

With spring, the partisans enter decisively into action,

while the Allied armies attack on all fronts.

Operations follow each other at a faster pace.

The liberation of the North is approaching!

Tanks parading through the roads at dawn.

A woman of the people carries a message with precise information

on the movements of German troops.

It's time for action.

Last feverish preparations... ammunition is distributed.

The dispatch riders carry the decisive announcement.

The commanders located along the front lines

receive the order to attack everywhere.

The watchword of the Committee of National Liberation of Upper Italy is:

national uprising, general strike, defense of factories,

action in depth against Germans and Fascists.

The national uprising breaks out across northern Italy.

In the cities, depopulated of men,

women bear the anti-German and anti-Fascist action.

The female workers of Biella organize a massive strike.

Strikes occur in all the cities of the north simultaneously.

Meanwhile the partisans proceed with the gradual conquest of the key points.

The main roads are blocked. Decisive clashes are imminent.

Uprising in Novara.

By now the situation is under control of the partisans.

The bishop of the city goes calmly to negotiate the surrender of the Germans

to the commander of the partisan troops.

And Hitler's and Mussolini's looters give themselves up as prisoners.

The jubilant city commemorates the 13 martyrs of Vignale

massacred by Nazi rage.

The partisan divisions are welcomed with fraternal enthusiasm.

The population of liberated Biella listens to the word of Moscatelli,

head of the Garibaldians of Val Sesia.

From all the mountains, from all the towns of Lombardy,

the partisan troops flock towards Milan.

Under the guidance of the National Liberation Committee of Upper Italy,

Milan is preparing to strike back.

The last feverish preparations are under way to initiate the first actions.

Getting ready to fight, and it is fought, in all the streets of the city,

which always lives up to its 'Five Days'.

Appropriate popular reaction against the traitors of the country.

There is no doubt about the outcome of the battle.

And still more partisan blood is spilled in the streets of Milan.

The number of prisoners increases hour by hour.

Here are the frightened faces of the thugs of the Black Brigades.

The ignoble women who had affairs with the Germans

are brought to the streets and piazzas to be shaved,

while the true women of Italy happily welcome the liberators.

They, who have given so much in sacrifice and blood

to the resistance and to the partisan war,

even forming detachments and female brigades,

besides the risky work of liaison and resistance.

German garrisons and gangs of Fascists

march in columns towards the prison camps.

The sports fields become prison camps

to accomodate the crowd of German and Fascist prisoners.

The victorious partisans come into town from the neighboring regions.

Entire German units surrender to the partisan commanders.

It is the twilight of the Teutonic gods, false and ferocious.

In Piazza del Duomo, partisan commander Moscatelli speaks to the people of Milan.

Already the life of Milan resumes its working pace.

The first newspapers are printed.

The allied troops are received enthusiastically.

The people salute the Bersaglieri with a wave of applause.

The brotherhood of forces, in the intoxication of victory,

joins the partisans to our soldiers and the allied ones.

The war criminal Graziani is arrested.

The tribunals of the people apply a prompt and severe justice,

starting with the bloodthirsty, theatrical, incompetent man

who corrupted the country and led it to its ruin: Benito Mussolini.

The one who, as a boy, once said to his mother:

"There will come a day that Italy will have to fear me!"

The one who later said "Italy needs a bath of blood."

Beside him, the corpses of other party officials.

If I advance, follow me. If I retreat, kill me. [Mussolini]

Here is Starace, former Secretary of the Fascist Party.

The victorious partisan brigades are parading:

the Garibaldians of Val Sesia, the Matteotti brigades,

the brigades of Justice and Freedom, Val Toce,

the brigades of God, Beltrame, Oltrep� Pavese...

the GAP and SAP are parading... all creators of Italy's new Risorgimento.

From the ruins of Fascism,

painfully,

Italy is reborn.

While the battle still seethed in the north,

in the south, ravaged and plundered, work and life were resuming.

And here at the forefront are the most modest, the most pure:

workers, peasants, women, youth.

Ferruccio Parri, the popular "Maurizio" who led the partisans in Northern Italy,

and is now head of the government,

at the ceremony in the Capitol at the end of the war,

said, in his simple and educational way:

"You know our current situation:

little to eat, nothing to warm up with,

many people homeless and almost without clothes,

misery.

But what does it matter, if this is the price of our new destiny

as a democratic, peaceful and hard-working people?

Blessed be the sacrifice of our best children,

shot, massacred, perished from the hardships and horrors of German camps,

if this is the fatal price

for the nation to wake up, retrieve itself, and rise again."

These were the words of Parri.

Leaving behind the destructive drunkenness of Fascist rhetoric,

and its antiquated, archaeological Neronian dreams,

the nation, with the patient and almighty strength of labor,

sets out to transform Italy in ruins into the garden of Europe.

Modern technology, in the hands of a hard-working and peaceful people,

can redeem the country from poverty,

and give it the vocation of prosperity.

Recovering its beautiful and original soul, Franciscan and Garibaldian,

made of goodness and humanity,

Italy sets off on the road to the future.

THE END

English subs by edam17 & filmnutz @ KG January 2013