US Jeeps Cross the Devil’s Bridge

Posted on February 3, 2018 by Francis

Recently, photographs dating from the last years of WW2 have appeared on local Facebook pages.

I was particularly struck by this one showing the famed Ponte Del Diavolo / Ponte Della Maddalena at Borgo a Mozzano being crossed by Allied Jeeps in 1944.

Here is the fabulous bridge as I saw it the other week. How the weather changes from one day to the next!

With all the other bridges blown up by the retreating Nazi-fascist troops the mediaeval bridge at Borgo a Mozzano was the only way to cross the Serchio north of Lucca. I suspect Jerry didn’t blow it up because he thought no vehicles would be able to use it. He was obviously wrong…

Thank goodness Jerry thought that. It would have been another tragedy to have lost this lovely bridge to the ravages of war. For instance, there used to be an attractive mediaeval bridge at nearby Calavorno:

After the war a new bridge was built further upstream which anyone going from Bagni di Lucca to Gallicano will recognize:

I’m wondering whether the Devil’s bridge was tested for carrying capacity before the Jeeps crossed it. I would have loved to hear the conversation among the US troops at the time.

Of course, it’s impossible to cross this amazing bridge by car now as there’s a bollard stuck in the middle of its entrance. If it were possible to get past this I’m sure arrests would follow, quite apart from having one’s photo plastered on the regional newspapers.

It’s a sobering thought, however, that a bridge built in the twelfth century by that formidable woman, Matilde di Canossa, to facilitate the crossing of pilgrims to the Holy See via the Via Francigena was used in the twentieth century, not to save people’s souls but to save Italy from having to suffer further years of fascist-Nazi hell and help to found a new peaceful vision of Europe.

Here are some further photos taken during that ever more tragic last year of WW2 when Allied troops were fighting the final battles against the Axis powers along the Gothic line crossing our part of the world.

Let us remember the over sixty years of peace we have enjoyed as a result of Robert Schuman’s vision (not to be confused with the romantic composer who has 2 ‘n’s at the end of his name).

The terrible thing about what is happening in the UK right now is not just the false promises proffered by a rapidly weakening government but the division it’s causing in families, constituencies, political parties and, ultimately, the country itself. The wounds inflicted by this atrocious dogmatic nonsense are, in my opinion, similar to those caused by the policy of appeasement in the 1930’s and the changed imperial outlook after the last conflict.

Bagni di Lucca’s Concentration Camp

Posted on January 26, 2018 by Francis

On 27^th January 1945 Red Army troops entered the Nazi concentration and death camp of Auschwitz and came across a scene which remains indelibly etched on the world’s conscience. In 2005 a United Nations resolution instituted an International Holocaust Remembrance Day or ‘Giorno della memoria’ as it’s known here in Italy.

270px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-N0827-318,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Ankunft_ungarischer_Juden

It’s so important to remember the most horrific genocide Europe has ever known, in which almost seven million people were killed purely on the grounds of their ethnicity, their beliefs or their sexual orientation. Forgetting what happened then only encourages further genocides in other parts of the world such as is still occuring today in countries whose names sadly crop up time and time again in the news.

Bagni di Lucca is commemorating this awful part of our history with events throughout the week.

First there’s the commemoration, at Fornoli’s Peace Park, of Liliana Urbach, the only citizen of Bagni di Lucca who died in Auschwitz aged just sixteen months.

For more on Liliana see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/01/25/suffer-little-children/

Fascism originally did not uphold racist legislation. It was only after the conquest of Abyssinia and the establishment of the ‘East African Empire’ in 1936 that apartheid began here. Gradually this was extended through the exclusion of Jewish people from education and employment and finally led to the promulgation of racial laws with heavy punishments meted out to those who married into different ethnic groups.

I have an extensive post discussing Italy’s racial laws at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/01/21/38053/

(For Italy’s only extermination camp – in Trieste – see my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/06/04/italys-death-camp/)

The second holocaust event at Bagni di Lucca was the unveiling of a long overdue memorial plaque on the old Terme Hotel which is now crumbling amid grim desolation. It was in this hotel that ninety eight persons from Bagni di Lucca and surrounding areas were ‘concentrated’ before starting their journey to the Auschwitz death factory. Again I’ve dedicated a more-in-depth post on this hotel at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/from-bagni-di-lucca-to-auschwitz/

In that post I wrote “meanwhile, the sinister and decrepit façade of the old Hotel delle Terme has nothing to show on it that this was the last sight many people would have had of their beloved families and their beautiful country. This, in my opinion, is a scandal that must be rectified as soon as possible. Here is a building that, more than any other in this area, witnessed man’s brutality to man and people pass by it without realizing what purpose it was used for. A memorial plaque should be placed on it now because if we don’t remember……..”

(It’s also horrifically ironic that it was in this same hotel, in happier days that Puccini composed a large part of his wonderful opera, ‘Girl of the Golden West’ in 1909).

I’m glad that this omission has now been rectified.

The memorial plaque reads as follows:

‘Here, at Bagni di Lucca’s hot baths in the old Terme hotel, Italian and foreign jews, arrested in our province by order of the Italian Social Republic, were confined. 98 old, adult and young persons left here on the 23rd of January 1944. Auschwitz was their destination, the result of racial hatred’.

Regarding this incident there are so many unanswered questions. Could anything have been done to save these ninety eight people? Did they know where they were heading to? Was it ignorance or indifference or fright of locals that marked their fateful end? Why was the god, whose temple lies opposite the hotel, so blatantly indifferent to their plight when religious brethren were particularly active and lost their lives in opposing such barbarities? (For example, the exemplary action of Don Aldo Mei – read about him in my post at https://longoio.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/forgiving-your-executioners-the-story-of-don-aldo-mei/ )

We may never know but we shall never forget!

A Christmas Crib in the Trenches

Posted on January 11, 2018 by Francis

Not all ‘presepi’ – Italian Christmas cribs – are pretty, traditional types depicting shepherds and their flocks, picturesque village houses and old crafts. In 2001, for example, I saw the following presepe in Bagni di Lucca:

This most poignant representation was set in Ground Zero and was installed in what is now the Banca di Roma building in the market square.

It must be remembered that just over three months had passed since the greatest peacetime atrocity against civilians had been perpetrated by Muslim extremists. Again, for Christmas 2011, that crib was recreated in the church of the Crucifix in Lucca – a very beautiful church once on the list of buildings at risk, but now thankfully being restored. It was called “Ground Zero ten years ago-ten years after” and was again created by the scene designer, Alessandro Sesti, who dedicated it to the tragedy of the Twin Towers in New York City, an event which truly changed the world.

An incredibly poignant presepe is the one we visited a few days ago in the former chapel of Saint Elizabeth, in the ex-Franciscan monastery of Borgo a Mozzano. It’s titled ‘Un Natale in Trincea’ – a Christmas in the trenches – and relates to one of the greatest tragedies and ineptitudes in the annals of military disasters: the Italian campaign in Russia of 1941-3 in which, out of a quarter of a million troops sent to the front, almost half never returned.

The presepe is strong meat to take emotionally, especially when one looks at the photographs of the abortive campaign which are displayed in a narrow trench-like corridor one has to pass through before reaching the actual crib itself.

First are the triumphalist pictures and propaganda of the ill-prepared Italian brigades setting out, largely on a Mussolini-inspired (Hitler didn’t ask for any Italian troops) one-way ticket, to the Russian front. Just gaze at the farewells between the young men and their sweethearts….

Then, after battles in which the Italians actually received praise for their bravery from the enemy Russians – the Italian cavalry charge of Isbuscenskij still stirs the memory here..a sort of mediterranean equivalent of the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade – the terrible sufferings of the soldiers’ retreat with cardboard-thin boots and uniforms totally unsuited for temperatures which reached below forty centigrade. The photo of the brigade band below is almost absurdly unviewable.

The presepe was prepared by the Misericordia of Borgo – the voluntary ambulance and first aid body without which Italy’s medical services would be ineffective – and is dedicated to Borgo a Mozzano’s eighty victims of the Russian campaign . The idea was to create a dream of an Italian Christmas crib as imagined seventy five years ago by the starving, frostbitten soldiers on the Don River front when thinking of home.

The majority of the soldiers were Alpini, the famed Italian mountain troops, and the crib has the patronage of the National Presidency of the Alpine Association and the Municipality of Borgo a Mozzano. If one asks what alpine troops were doing in the vast Russian steppes the idea was for a quick blitzkrieg victory and then head for the Caucasian mountains and secure the oil fields for the Axis powers. As we know, this never happened and the lightning war degenerated into trench warfare stalemate until the overwhelming Russian victory at Stalingrad.

The display includes what the soldiers had to endure in the endless expanse of white snow and ice on the Russian plains, along the great river Don, during the Christmas of 1942. There are photos of the campaign during the advance and propaganda posters of the time, as well as the dramatic photos of the retreat.

A bit of background: since 1941, Italy, already present on several battle fronts of the Second World War, had been, alongside German, Romanian and Hungarian troops, inadvisedly involved in the attack on the USSR and, in 1941, had sent there a first contingent of 62,000 soldiers, part of the Italian expeditionary force in Russia (CSIR). In July and August 1942 other soldiers were sent to that front and the Italian contingent reached 230,000, formed in ten divisions. These included three Alpine divisions (the Cuneense, the Julia and the Tridentina). The whole was called ARMIR (Italian Army in Russia), also termed the eighth Army.

On Christmas day of 1942 the Russians began a strong and decisive counter-offensive against the invading armies. It was a Christmas which, for Italian soldiers, was the dramatic prelude to the beginning of an immense tragedy. On January 17 (feast of St. Anthony the Abbot) the order of withdrawal of Italian troops and those of the Axis allies was given. And so began the retreat across the endless steppes of the Don. It was a tragedy that concerned, above all, the Alpine Divisions. It is estimated that there were 85,000 Italian soldiers who did not return to their homeland throughout the Russian campaign. About 25,000 died in battle or in summary executions resulting from surrender, 70,000 were captured and, of these, only 10,000 were repatriated in the years following the end of the war. Even as late as 1958 there were still 60,000 men unaccounted for. They probably disappeared in the snowstorms and in the suffering of the prison camps.

Among these were also the eighty men from Borgo a Mozzano, to whom the crib is dedicated. In this crib there’s a flower for all those soldiers who never received anything on their unmarked burial places. ‘Dispersi in Russia’ is a phrase that appears with monotonous regularity on Italian war memorials including the one at our nearby village of San Cassiano.

The heartrending crib is made even more poignant by its sound track of alpine songs. It would be an obvious statement to say that I was close to tears when I emerged from the ‘Presepe Della Trincea’. The pity of war indeed!

Basic Instincts in London

Posted on December 18, 2017 by Francis

Abuse and sexual violence continue to be a major theme in the news. The same preoccupation was underlined in eighteenth century England where more humanitarian ideals arose to combat the brutish male instincts of female and child exploitation.

These subjects are brought to the fore in the Coram Foundation exhibition in London on Joseph Highmore’s art entitled ‘Basic instincts’, which runs until January 7th next year.

London’s Foundling Hospital, established for abandoned children by Thomas Coram in 1739, is a prime example of a new attitude in facing mankind’s darker side. Charitable institutions, philanthropists, benefactors and movements for moral reform paved the way for the great century of Victorian social change with all its contradictions (but without which organizations such as Oxfam, MSF and the YMCA would not exist today).

The change in attitude towards rectifying the miseries of life, especially in the expanding cities of the early industrial revolution, are underlined in the novels of Samuel Richardson. These treat moral questions in a quite different way from the picaresque works of writers like Fielding and Defoe.

The themes of virtue rewarded in ‘Pamela’, or virtue crushed in ‘Clarissa’ (incidentally, at 1534 pages one of the longest novels in the English language and a gripping read for all that) spilled over in painting, especially in the art of Hogarth. His series ‘Rake’s Progress’ (at the Soane museum in London) are an astonishing insight into the seamier side of 18th century life imbued with the pox, corruption, cheap gin and bribery and leading the unbridled passions of young bloods to the manacles of the madhouse (where fashionable society would visit the inmates for amusement rather than for charity).

The painter Joseph Highmore (1692-1780) belongs to the genre of ‘moral’ painting developed by Hogarth (1697-1764). Like Hogarth, Highmore was associated with the Foundling Hospital. Abandoning a legal career imposed upon him by his family, Highmore started painting portraits for the middle-class and eventually received royal patronage.

The fascinating exhibition focuses on three aspects of Highmore’s works.

First are exquisite portraits of family groups, including the artist’s own. In a pre-photographic age these are the closest we’ll ever get to visualising the modest elegance and intimate family affections of English 18th century bourgeoisie).

Second is the transition towards the narratives of virtues and vices. In 1744 Highmore painted twelve pictures based on ‘Pamela’, which were subsequently engraved to form a sort of serious comic (if that oxymoron may be allowed). These genre paintings are quite wonderful and could be compared in domestic sentiment to those of eighteenth century Venetian painter, Pietro Longhi (1702-1785).

Third are the biblical narratives like ‘Hagar and Ishmael’ and a painting of terrible power, now exhibited for the first time ever: ‘The Angel of Mercy’. At first sight this looks like a characteristic ‘Virgin with Child’ picture. Examining it more closely the painting reveals a planned infanticide by strangulation stopped just in time.

The revelation is, indeed, shocking but justly reflects the age where birth-control was another word for killing babies and where abortion all too often led to death. The Angel of Mercy is clearly a symbol for such institutions as the Foundling Hospital.

The exhibition is small and well-documented. As it was just round the corner where I am receiving treatment at UCLH, it has been one that I have returned to and discovered new insights every time in this area of London (Bloomsbury) which breathes mercy, benefactors and the higher aspects of humanity through its hospitals, foundations, trusts and university colleges.

Dove si Fidanzarano Percy Bysshe e Mary Shelley

Posted on December 3, 2017 by Francis

La popolazione del distretto di Saint Pancras a Londra cresceva rapidamente nel nuovo secolo diciannovesimo. La vecchia chiesa non soddisfava più le esigenze dei parrocchiani.

L’edificio non era considerato degno e così gli abitanti costruirono una nuova chiesa a sud nel piu’ puro stile neoclassico.

Eppure la vecchia chiesa continuava ad esistere, costruita sul più antico sito cristiano delle isole britanniche e risalente al secolo quinto.

Attorno la chiesa, come tradizione in Inghilterra, c’e il camposanto, chiuso alle sepolture solo nel 1854.

E che sepolture, e che monumenti e che ricordi!

Per primo si trova il monumento della meridiana (dedicato a profughi francesi) della baronessa Burdett-Coutts, nobile donna ricchissima e grande filantropa, amica di Dickens (che da giovane visse in queste parti). Ella fece così tanto per aiutare i poveri della metropoli costruendo case sane e distribuendo cure mediche durante un epoca dove regnava il re colera e la miseria assoluta.

Attorno il monumento c’è una lapide dedicata alla sepoltura di Johann Christian Bach, il ‘Bach Inglese’, undicesimo figlio del grande Johann Sebastian. Venuto a Londra, dopo essere stato organista al Duomo di Milano, diventò insegnante di musica della Regina Carlotta e con Abel, anch’esso qui sepolto, organizzò tra le prime stagioni di concerti della capitale con molte sue sinfonie composte nel nuovo stile galante così diverso da quello del suo babbo.

Dickens ambiento’ nelle vie circostanti la casa della famiglia Crachit che raffigura nel suo bellissimo racconto ‘canto di Natale’, (eseguito al teatro Bagni di Lucca lo scorso dicembre ).

Quando vennero le ferrovie il camposanto fu ridotto e toccò al giovane Thomas Hardy, prima che diventasse lo scrittore di romanzi come ‘Tess dei Durbeville’, di spostare i corpi e sistemare le lapidi attorno un albero dove tuttora rimangano in un abbraccio mistico con le radici.

La tomba più elegante rimane quella dell’architetto eccelso, Sir John Soane. Tra i suoi capolavori è la galleria d’arte del mio vecchio Collegio con novella illuminazione dalle finestre poste sul soffitto. La tomba da lui ideata fu l’ispirazione, più di cent’anni dopo, della caratteristica cabina telefonica inglese.

Una panchina nel camposanto ricorda che qui, nel 1968, si sedettero i Beatles aspettando a farsi fotografare in attesa dell’uscita del loro nuovo disco ‘Hey Jude’:

Per me, però, la tomba che suscita la maggiore emozione è quella di Mary Wollstonecraft, la madre di Mary Shelley e autrice dei ‘diritti del donne’, che morì dando nascita alla figlia, scrittrice (tra altro) di ‘Frankenstein’.

Fu presso questa tomba che i giovani innamorati, Percy e Mary, si davano appuntamento e si fidanzarano segretamente. Fu qui che decisero di scappare dall’Inghilterra per il continente; un viaggio che li portò in Italia e, per la loro prima estate, a Bagni di Lucca.

(La giovane Mary Shelley)

Accarezzando il muschio in un freddissimo pomeriggio del primo di dicembre, con un vento che dava gelidi schiaffi alle guancia, cercando inutilmente un raggio di sole debole per riscaldarmi, i pensieri si dirigevano a Percy Bysshe e Mary che qui pronunciarono parole che avrebbero legato insieme le loro vite in un amore fortissimo ma così pieno di tragedia. Era qui, nel 1814, così giovani e così pieni di speranze, che dissero ‘si’.

(Casa notata da Sandra vicino al camposanto)

E’ qui anche sepolto John Polidori, figlio di padre italiano e madre inglese. Che notte fantasmagorica quando, sulle sponde del lago di Ginevra, in compagnia dei Shelley e di Byron e in una notte movimentata da una violenta tempesta, si riunirono per scrivere racconti soprannaturali. Da Polidori ne uscì ‘Il Vampiro.’ Si suicidò, bevendo il cianuro, nel 1821, un anno prima della morte di Shelley sul mare Viareggino.

(PS. Speriamo che i nuovi fidanzati reali non incontrino mai tali amarezze e tali contrasti poiché se viene l’inverno può essere lontana la primavera? Il regno unito è felicissimo di un amore che sembra portare unità ad un paese che è stato così urtato dal risultato di un referendum senza senso e che, almeno qui nella distesa di Londra, nessuno vuole).

Pietra gelida:

solo il sole del cuore

ti puo’ riscaldare.

Tavistock Square, Londra

Posted on November 30, 2017 by Francis

Una piazza bella ma triste è Tavistock square nel quartiere di Bloomsbury Londra.

Ricordiamo prima di tutto che le piazze in Inghilterra sono di due tipi.

Primo è la piazza come Trafalgar square, ampio spazio pavimentato dove il pubblico si congrega.

Secondo, e tipicamente inglese, è la piazza-giardino dove anticamente l’accesso era solo per gli inquilini che abitavano attorno nelle loro case a schiera.

Tali piazze come Bedford e Belgrave square serbano ancora la loro privatezza con quelli che abitano attorno mentre altre, come Russell e Gordon square sono aperte al pubblico.

Tavistock square, costruita nel 1820, era anticamente una di quelle private ma ora appartiene al municipio di Camden.

E’ aperta a tutti: gli impiegati d’ufficio, i lavoratori del distretto, i pensionati per trascorrere ore di riflessione, bambini, turisti e sempre i caratteristici scoiattoli grigi dei spazi verdi di Londra.

La piazza si chiama Tavistock dopo il marchese di Tavistock, il figlio maggiore del duca di Bedford, che commissionò la piazza sul suo podere.

Un piazza bella ma triste. Perché triste?

Qui è stata fondata la Tavistock clinic per trattare quei soldati che subirono ‘shell-shock’, cioè la psicosi di bombardamento, e non riuscivano a ritornare ad una vita ‘normale’.

Qui è stato piantato un albero di ciliegia per ricordare le vittime delle bombe atomiche lanciate su Hiroshima e Nagasaki. In primavera l’albero è uno splendore ma ora rimane cupo come quei fatti che ricorda.

Qui si trova un grande sasso che commemora gli obiettori di coscienza, cioè quelli che finirono in prigione o furono torturati e perfino uccisi perché non volevano uccidere nelle guerre. Questo sasso fu inaugurato dal grande compositore Michael Tippett, anch’esso un obiettore imprigionato e scrittore del capolavoro ‘a child of our time’.

In questa piazza si trovano memoriali alla grande scrittrice Virginia Woolf che abitava in questa piazza e che si suicidò, depressa dai bombardamenti della guerra che distrusse la casa con la sua biblioteca proprio qui.

Parlando di guerra, Sandra ha notato i segni della vecchia ringhiera tolta durante la guerra per materiale bellico e la nuova ringhiera messa qualche anno fa.

Si trova anche il memoriale al primo chirurgo donna, Louisa Aldrich-Blake (1865-1925), che lottò per i diritti delle donne.

In mezzo alla piazza si trova uno dei più grandi di tutti i tempi: una statua forte e meditativa di Mahatmaji Gandhi, protestatore di pace contro l’oppressione con la sua filosofia del satyagraha e ucciso da un fanatico nel 1948. Sotto la statua c’è un cunicolo dove si possono fare offerte al mahatma che, quando chiesto ‘che ne pensa della civiltà occidentale’, rispose ‘sarebbe una bell’idea’…..

Non finiscono qui le ricordanze di questa piazza. Su un lato c’è la consueta lapide blu che indica l’abitazione del più grande romanziere inglese e lottatore contro le ingiustizie, le corruzioni e la povertà della Londra vittoriana. Fu qui, infatti, che scrisse il suo più grande romanzo ‘Bleak House’ (casa desolata), un libro potentissimo ancora oggi, che attacca il sistema giuridico e l’ideologia del capitalismo e inneggia l’amore puro e assoluto.

Il ricordo più toccante di Tavistock square rimane per me questa lapide eretta sulla cancellata del BMA (associazione dei medici britannici).

Commemora i morti innocenti dell’attentato del sette luglio 2005 quando un gruppo di fanatici islamisti in quattro luoghi diversi di Londra uccisero cinquanta due persone e ferirono gravemente sette cento e ottanta quattro. Era in questo punto che sull’autobus numero trenta furono uccisi tredici persone. Sono subito usciti i dottori del BMA, che erano all’una conferenza, ad assistere.

Notiamo anche che i morti venivano da tutte le parti del mondo.

L’autobus distrutto fu rimpiazzato da uno nuovo chiamato ‘spirit of London’.

Ecco quello che costituisce una grande città : edifici, memorie e principalmente degli abitanti che tirano avanti e che non si lasciano mai scoraggiare.

Cadono foglie:

nella morta memoria

entra l’autunno.

From London to La Costa (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Three

Category Archives: History