Those "everyday heroes" swept away by terrorism

Every year, on 9 May , the anniversary of the killing of Aldo Moro in 1978 , the day in memory of the victims of terrorism is celebrated in our country. Illustrious victims, such as the leader of the Christian Democrats Moro, along with many, too many whose names have now practically fallen into oblivion.

For this reason, it seems to us a good thing on a day like this to recover the painstaking work of investigation into memory carried out by Salvatore Lordi in his " Dark Years " (Bibliotheka, 2021, euro 18, pp. 536, also e-book), a volume in which terrorism is told from a different perspective to the usual one: from the side of those who wore a uniform and for this reason paid with their lives for the courageous choice to place themselves at the service of the institutions.

Thus the book - which is introduced by a preface written by Guido Salvini, a magistrate long engaged in the fight against terrorism - traces the bloody season of bomb attacks by South Tyrolean irredentists who, starting from the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, put not only South Tyrol on its knees, but the whole of Italy, to continue with the following decade and the many obscure acronyms that made up the subversive constellations of right and left of the years of lead. We meet in the book the story of more than 40 law enforcement officers who fell because they were wearing a uniform and were doing their duty. In the volume Lordi alternates descriptions of the climate of the time with the story of the personal story of the protagonist or protagonists. Then follow the testimonies of relatives of the victims. In these parts the author seems to tiptoe into their homes, trying to bring out the stories that, in many cases, had been deliberately erased from memories. Thus the everyday life behind the tragedy emerged, the subdued pain, lived with the modesty of wives, children, brothers. A piece of history that has never come to light while in the background a society that no longer exists emerges forcefully, made up of an iron education and many sacrifices to get by.

In short, a book that does not simply want to report or outline a historical era. It aims to remember, commemorate and, above all, fill a serious absence , that of a narration of the Italian terrorist events made from the point of view of the victims. Because the literature on terrorism has focused more on the perpetrators and struggles to come to terms with the dead. It is no coincidence that the magistrate Guido Salvini, in his preface, speaks of a book that should be read in schools for its value as testimony of how just a few decades the fact of wearing a uniform was enough to decree the death of a human being.