ROME, 28 September 2003 — Remarks by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi casting fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in a less unfavorable than his usual image in postwar Italy have prompted another reappraisal — that of the Italian men and women who fought fascism.
Right-winger Berlusconi is no stranger to controversy. He caused a storm in July by sarcastically suggesting that a German politician who criticized him could play a Nazi concentration camp guard in a film being shot.
This month Berlusconi thought it wise to apologize to the Jewish community for his claim that Mussolini never killed anyone.
Berlusconi triggered outrage when a newspaper quoted him as saying that the former Blackshirt leader only “used to send people on holiday....”
Mussolini ruled for more than 20 years until 1943 when Field Marshal Pietro Badoglio signed a peace with the invading Allied forces, ending four years of war, hunger and despair.
Italy was in chaos, cut in two between the liberated south, and the north still occupied by Mussolini followers backed by occupying Germans.
Mussolini was eventually captured and shot out of hand by Italian Resistance fighters, then strung up by his heels together with his mistress in a public place in Milan.
This month Italy’s President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi led tributes to the partisan fighters on the 60th anniversary of the overthrow of Mussolini in Rome, stressing their role in restoring the honor and self-respect of the Italian people after 20 years of fascist rule.
“The Resistance was a page of patriotism with which the people restored Italy after the catastrophe of fascist dictatorship,” said Ciampi, who himself served as a young resistance fighter. “The younger generation should know that without the Resistance and without the Risorgimento (the 19th-century Italian unification movement) this country would be worse off today,” he said.
The words sounded very much like a call to order to the prime minister to watch his lip after the claim that Mussolini had not killed a soul. And Berlusconi’s words did not exactly find favor within his own right-of-center coalition either.
Gianfranco Fini, No. 2 in the government line-up, commented: “Berlusconi could have spared himself that remark.”
It is worthy of note that Fini himself is boss of the extreme right-wing National Alliance, a party usually officially described as “post-fascist,” meaning it can trace its ancestry directly to Mussolini.
Fini has personally distanced himself from the fascist heritage.
However, Berlusconi’s latest foot-in-mouth episode was not expected to prevent him receiving a “Distinguished Statesman Award” in New York coming Tuesday from the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.
League director Abraham Foxman, himself a Holocaust survivor, said he had received no withdrawals among those invited to attend, who included Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
As part of a revisiting of their past, six million Italian viewers this month saw a television documentary devoted to Resistance hero Salvo D’Acquisto.
D’Acquisto, a 23-year-old non-commissioned officer in the Carabinieri police, sacrificed his life to save a village threatened with reprisals by German occupiers.
One German soldier was killed and two were seriously wounded when a bomb exploded. To save the village from reprisals D’Acquisto took responsibility for the bombing and was shot by firing squad.
The Roman Catholic Church has begun the process of his beatification as a martyr.
During World War II, following the promulgation of fascist racial laws in 1938, almost 8,000 Italian Jews were deported.
Berlusconi said after his Mussolini gaffe he had never wanted to “reappraise Mussolini” or “make a historical analysis of Fascism” but to draw a distinction between Mussolini and deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. But his comment triggered outrage in Italy, with some claiming it was an apology of fascism.
Giorgio La Malfa, another coalition party chief, said “Fascism had been a vicious dictatorship ... which murdered, injured and imprisoned for years and years thousands of political and trade union militants and also exiled all opponents abroad.”
