Campo Giuriati

Garden where three partisans were executed in the first months of 1945.

The entrance is in via Ponzio 34, from the so-called Città Studi. After a few meters, there’s a garden on the right, and on the far right of the garden is the place where some detained partisans, sentenced by fascist courts, were executed between January and March 1945.

The first shooting occurred on 14th January 1945, when a platoon of the Battaglione azzurro dell’Aeronautica militare was ordered to shoot nine young men of the Fronte della Gioventù, aged 18-22, some of whom were workers at the T.I.B.B. and at the Geloso: Sergio Bazzoni, Renzo Botta, Arturo Capecchi, Attilio Folli, Roberto Giardino, Roberto Ricotti, Giuseppe Rossato, Giancarlo Serrani, Luciano Rossi. They were all active residents of the area between piazzale Corvetto and Porta Romana, and matured their antifascist ideology in the factory during the strikes of March 1944. They were sentenced to death by the fascist Tribunale militare regionale di guerra of Milan chaired by  Pasquale Spoleti; the sentences were dated 11th and 12th January 1945.

On 2nd February, members of the GAP, almost all belonging to the 3rd Brigata d’assalto Garibaldi, were also shot there: Luigi Campegi, Venerino Mantovani, Vittorio Resti, Oliviero Volpones, Franco Mandelli. Campegi was one of the most famous partisan chiefs, he was 31 and had already been arrested in December 1943. He was also in Valsesia among the formations lead by Cino Moscatelli. Mantovani was a worker at Olap and was 43 years old; Resti was 48, Volpones was 40. The younger Franco Mandelli was a member of the 182nd Brigata Garibaldi and was only 20 years old.

Recent findings lead to a third episode, which is the shooting of partisan Luigi Arcalini – member of the Aliotta division, Brigata Crespi, born in Voghera on 3rd December 1920 – which took place here by the hand of militants of the Legione Muti on 18th March 1945.
Massimo Castoldi