There’s a short cut to eternity in a Catholic environment like the Italian – proclaiming someone a saint. Martirology is a ritual form of the conformist mind-set that shuns posing uneasy questions. The article has a byline which is very close to home. Raffaele Calzini, the author, had been one of Rino’s main competitors at the time of his appointment as head of the Brera Academy – a rival very well considered by a powerful faction of the Fascist Party. Now he refers the rumors concerning the death of Emil Ludwig – the famous biographer, author of the successful Talks with Mussolini (1932) –, and that of Amelia. He gives vent to the suspicion that she might have been a part of an antifascist conspiracy led by Badoglio (with whom she would have kept a correspondence), but offers a different version of her end. It would have occurred in Bolzano, where an unspecified “they” had «completely shaven her blonde-chestnut hair, and where she had died while praying: like a saint». This is a narrative similar to the one that I would had heard sixty-five years later: no Sondertransport, no concentration camp North of the Alps. A hushed mention of Badoglio, but no indictment whatsoever of Italian and German Fascists and Nazis. A saintly death silences any injustice, any abuse of power, and god forbid, any exploitation of the labor force. Sainthood defeats time and disregards pe!y questions of money. Forgiveness is just a step away from a convenient disremembrance. What had happened in Bolzano was, to a certain extent, within the borders: it was a shocking but contained outburst of violence: be!er not to look beyond, enlarge the view, open the door to other stories of defenseless women and involvement with a discredited regime. ———— I have also some old family friends in Portofino; I know the area, and I’m familiar with quite a few people down there. It goes back a long way, at least three generations. So at some point, over the summer, I mentioned to my eighty-year old father what I was doing. Some of his acquaintances, too, might have been privy to part of this intricate cobweb. He spent his early teenage years nearby, listening
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