Via Botticelli

Where four very young partisans of the Fronte della Gioventù were shot on 6th January 1945.

Via Botticelli is where a particularly brutal killing, about which we still know very little, took place.

In the winter between 1944 and 1945, a big repressive wave hit hard Eugenio Curiel’s Fronte della Gioventù. Its very young activists were not prepared to face the network of spies and denunciations established by the regime, so many of them were captured.

Tullio Di Parti, Orazio Maron and Giancarlo Tonissi were 16 years old, Giuseppe Bodra was 18.

They were all members of the Fronte. Orazio Maron was employed at the railway company, worked in the repair hubs in Via Teodosio and was member of the 10th Brigata Matteotti. They were all arrested by the battaglione azzurro of Piazza Novelli, maybe caught in the act of transporting antifascist propaganda, or maybe identified as one of those people throwing flyers at Cinema Pace in Corso Buenos Aires.

They were tortured for a few days and killed on 6th January; their bodies were placed on the sidewalk, in the snow. On that exact spot, today, there is a plate commemorating them.

 

Cristina Palmieri