• Sant'Anna Stazzema, Mattarella: those who forget are weaker
  • Mattarella recalls Stazzema massacre, 'defending rights from threats'
  • Nazi-fascist massacres, Tillerson in Sant'Anna di Stazzema: anyone who kills innocent people will have to answer for it
  • Massacre of Stazzema, Napolitano: reopening of the investigation in Germany, glimmer for truth
  • August 12, 1944, the Nazi massacre of Sant'Anna di Stazzema

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February 29, 2020 "We must be vigilant: the epochal changes offer opportunities in every field but often cause fear, disorientation, closures and the germ of hatred is not defeated forever, the fear of the different, the refusal of difference, the will to overcome they are feelings that can still take root and develop and spread ". This was stated by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella in Sant'Anna di Stazzema on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the awarding of the Gold Medal for Military Valor to the city. The Head of State then stressed: "Memory is a duty, it constitutes a patrimony of the community, time can ease the pain but we cannot allow consciences to fall asleep, testimony is part of our duty of solidarity". Finally, the Head of State reiterated: "United Europe is the true response of civilization to the ideology of oppression that Nazism and fascism wanted to impose on our peoples".



Sant'Anna di Stazzema (Lucca), is the site of the Nazi-fascist massacre of 12 August 1944 which made 560 victims among the civilian population, including the elderly, women and children. President Mattarella is in Sant'Anna to participate in the initiatives for the 50th anniversary of the awarding of the gold medal for military valor in Sant'Anna and also for the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the Peace Park.

Mattarella is the fifth President of the Republic who visits Sant'Anna after Pertini in 1982, Scalfaro in 1998, Ciampi in 2000, Napolitano together with the German President Gauck in 2013. As soon as he arrived in the square of Sant'Anna, Mattarella met one of the survivors, Enrico Pieri who was 10 years old on the day of the massacre, and then laid a crown on the monument that commemorates the massacre. Then he visited the museum, then went to the Rights Factory, a building dedicated to conferences and events for the dissemination of the memory of those facts.