A
forlorn child, crying in a Roman road.
It was 24th. March 1944. The S.S. was taking away her grandfather,
along with other people, towards what later would be known
as ‘the slaughter of the Ardeatìne ditch’.
She was only 11 years old, gripped tight to her grandfather’s
legs, who was
tied and kept in a line by the Nazi Police, under the command
of Kappler.
Unexpectedly a tommy-gun was pointed in her face “She
wasn’t afraid of them, she only wanted her grandfather”
and a priest, shouting, positioned himself between them, telling
the soldier that she was only a little girl, a little girl
who wanted her grandfather.
The military lowered his weapon, turned, and the line moved
on, dense with lives drifting, directed towards the cave in
via Ardeatine, leaving a young child crying on the curb.
I don’t know how but the grandfather returned.
That young child was my mother.
I wanted to begin by telling a short familiar story because
talking about the Ardeatine ditch, for us Romans, is to
narrate an authentic story experienced by our parents, grandparents
and myself. Every time I visit the mausoleum, I am unable
to remove the imagines that have materialized through my
mother’s tales, which have accompanied me since my
childhood.
This story is well-known. On the 23rd. of March a group
of partisan’s began a line of attack, in via Rasella,
against an armed troop of the SS. 33 Germans died and many
were injured. Hitler ordered the execution of ten Italians
for every German killed. The execution took place inside
the cave 335 people; some belonging to the Roman resistance,
others chosen haphazardly and others simply because they
were Jews.
However, all totally alien to the actions of via Rasella.
The bodies were hidden by exploding the mines that in turn
opened the caves.
This
laceration of the earth is still visible today, re-enforced
by a project, inaugurated in 1949 signed by Giuseppe Perugini,
Mario Fiorentini e Nello Aprile, whom together planned the
Sanctuary of the Ardeatine Ditch. A simple and severe project
the included the Mausoleum and the slaughter cave.
In the external square the sculptural group of the Martyrs
by Francesco Coccia and the entrance railing by Mirko Basaldella
are silhouetted against the sky.
The Mausoleum is a large
hall where the corpses are positioned in rows, in identical
coffins all equidistance and parallel to each other; in
a darkness cut only by a blade of sunlight that illuminates
the emptiness between them and the large rectangular mass,
(measures 50 x 25metres) in armato cement, in one whole
block that looms over everything like an mammoth tomb stone.
Symbolically it wishes to represent the oppression of the
cruelty of the Nazis and the concealment of the corpses
perpetrated in this place. The enormous burden of the horrors
of humanity doesn’t leave any means of escare apart
from the slender ray of sunlight that filters all around.
The
simplicity of the project is in its intensive expressive
force. The operations realized in the galleries are simple
tufacei walls and a few pillars necessary to sustain the
two large tears provoked by the mines. Nearly always architecture
gathers force more from subtracting rather than adding.
An interesting architectural work in a page of our history.
