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25 September 2021It is the President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who opens the official ceremony of the centenary of the death of Giuseppe Di Vagno, the socialist deputy born in 1889 in Conversano and assassinated in Mola di Bari on 25 September 1921.
The Head of State was welcomed in front of the Norba Theater (which for the occasion presents a tricolor cloth on the facade) by the President of the Region, Michele Emiliano, by the mayor of the Metropolitan City of Bari, Antonio Decaro, and by the Mayor of Conversano, Giuseppe Lovascio. The ceremony was also followed by the president of the Di Vagno Foundation, Gianvito Mastroleo, the president of the National Centenary Committee Professor Franco Gallo and Professor Paolo Bagnoli, director of the Historical Review of Socialism, who gave the lectio magistralis on the theme "Murder by Giuseppe Di Vagno for Italy today "to" rethink that crucial and terrible time in national history and because the personality and martyrdom of the deputy in his early thirties can help his contemporaries,especially the younger generations, to strengthen and rediscover that civil passion which is the essential nourishment of all freedom ".
After the ceremony, President Mattarella met the boys of the Conversano City Council who gave him a portrait made by the artist Leonardo Salvemini. The Head of State was also given a letter written by Benedetta and Angelo Cimarrusti, parents of Giuseppe Cimarrusti, the policeman from Conversano who died at the age of 26 in a firefight in Verona in 2005. After the visit, Sergio Mattarella left Conversano to return in Rome.
In the afternoon there will be the proclamation of the winner of the fourth edition of the Di Vagno award dedicated to the theme "Water and electricity to remake Italy: Turati, Di Vagno, Salvemini and the commitment of the socialists for infrastructure, education and reform of the South from the first post-war period to the birth of Republican Italy ". The ceremony will also be attended by Roberto Garofoli, undersecretary of state to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Emiliano: "We fight for democracy"
"Mr. President of the Republic, I offer you the excited and grateful greeting of all the Apulians who feel your closeness and your attention to a community that, following the example of Giuseppe Di Vagno, fights every day to realize the great democratic vision , of the Constitution of the Italian Republic ". This was said by the president of the Puglia Region, Michele Emiliano.
"Our vocation to peace and hospitality - he added - naturally springs from a beautiful story of Resistance to Nazi-Fascism which allowed Giuseppe Di Vagno to realize, well before the affirmation of fascism, that the road taken by the country would lead to catastrophic consequences ". "After all - he continued - politics is prediction and construction of the future, through the critical examination of history and its use as an essential guide to political action. Its proximity to the weakest, the exploited, its belonging to the reformist of the workers' movement - concluded Emiliano - allowed him to understand that democratic institutions must be strengthened and supported on a daily basis by the practice of democracy, in all its forms ".
Mayor Conversano: "Di Vagno defended the last ones"
"The occasion of the centenary is important to remember the values of the Republic, of democracy and to remember the cowardly murder of Di Vagno which took place one hundred years ago. Today we have the honor of having the President of the Republic here with us. Di Vagno is a symbol of Conversanese politics, he defended the last and was killed in those terrible circumstances (in an ambush by a group of fascists) in 1921. His memory conditions our thinking, all the reflections that they are made in politics, despite the fact that a hundred years have passed ". This was stated by the mayor of Conversano, Giuseppe Lovascio. " Conversano - concluded the mayor - is in a particular moment because it is a candidate for Capital of Culture 2024 and we are working hard these days ".
Decaro: "He makes his land great"
"A hundred years have passed and I believe that Di Vagno's teachings have a current value today. He fought for his land, for the people, to defend a people who had rights that he was unaware of. a piece of land or a piece of bread had given up its freedom ". This was stated by the mayor of Bari and president of Anci, Antonio Decaro, speaking with reporters on the sidelines of the celebration. "Here - added Decaro - there was the prelude to what would have happened later, the political battle that leads to the physical elimination of the opponent". "However - concluded Decaro - as Vittorio writes, 'the physical elimination of Di Vagno had led him to rise again'.A man who with his death has become a myth that survives and makes the history of our land great ".
Mastroleo: "Necessary anti-fascism, defense against all forms of violence is always needed"
"The Di Vagno Foundation promotes studies and research so that the stain that a hundred years ago soiled this land, redeeming from historiographic marginalization and anchoring to the truth, is erased forever of history what that crazy gesture produced, working, day after day, to keep the tension and the democratic conscience high in our lands ". This was stated by Gianvito Mastroleo, president of the Giuseppe di Vagno Foundation, speaking at the ceremony for the centenary of the killing of the Apulian parliamentarian assassinated a hundred years ago by the fascists.
For the Foundation "even higher" is "the defense against all forms of violence, wherever it comes from and in any case it hides, but which still today here and there karst resurfaces, 'hateful and cowardly': because we are aware that there can be no tolerance towards the intolerant and that anti-fascism, the cradle of modernity in which the ideals of politics, solidarity and social justice, equality and peace, individual and social rights are condensed, is always necessary: in our Italy and beyond ".
Gallo: "Remembering it means asking ourselves what remains of a past socialist experience"
"Celebrating the centenary of the death of Giuseppe Di Vagno does not just mean remembering a hateful, terrible political murder and an episode of unrendered justice. and other injustices sweep the world, produce inequalities and reduce the hope of achieving a more just society ". These are the words of Franco Gallo, president of the National Committee for the Centenary of Giuseppe Di Vagno's death, speaking at the ceremony in memory of
the Apulian parliamentarian killed on this day in 1921 by the fascists.
"We want, in particular, to draw attention to the terrible effects of the use, in the contemporary era, of violence and manipulation and false information as political tools aimed at the conquest and conservation of power - adds Gallo - We will debate, therefore, of populism, nationalism and sovereignty and, above all, of the use of the judiciary to guarantee immunity to those who kill a political opponent. We must never forget that the judicial epilogue, in the fascist era, of the assassination of Di Vagno is was not the condemnation of the perpetrators, but their acquittal as 'young people belonging to the fighting group and determined by political movements for a national purpose' - adds Gallo - For a Court of Appeal ofit was a fascist to kill a socialist with a pistol in the back was, therefore, officially a patriotic act, if committed by fascists. As Giuliano Vassalli disconsolately noted, 'killing a socialist was not a crime'.