Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea

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Monumento alla Resistenza Europea in Como

Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea (German: Last Letters to Death Condemned from the European Resistance ) is the title of the Italian edition of an anthology of farewell letters from young women and men, some of them from young people and children, before their death Second World War persecuted, tortured and executed by the National Socialists and the Wehrmacht .

history

The volume was published in 1954 by Giulio Einaudi Turin , edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli. The foreword comes from Thomas Mann . In 1955, the German edition of the anthology was published by Steinberg-Verlag Zurich - with the documentation of 280 letters and messages from young people who opposed fascism and fought against the German armed forces and the National Socialists.

The authors of the letters and communications came from Belgium , Bulgaria , Denmark , France , Greece , Italy , Yugoslavia , the Netherlands , Norway , Austria , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , the USSR and Germany .

The anthology also contains a description of the chronology of the occupation for the individual countries and a description of the events for which the German fascists and their collaborators in the occupied countries were responsible.

Foreword by Thomas Mann

For the anthology Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea has Thomas Mann wrote a foreword. In it he recalls the Europe-wide struggle against fascism and against every form of destruction, oppression and dictatorship. He wrote:

“This keeps coming back, and the heart contracts at the thought of what has become of the" victory of the future ", of the faith and hope of this youth, and in which world we live. In a world of vicious regression where superstitious and persecutory hatred is paired with panic fear; a world to whose intellectual and moral inaccessibility fate has entrusted weapons of destruction of hideous speed, which are piled up under the insane threat "if need be" of turning the earth into a desert enveloped in poisonous fumes. The decline in the cultural level, the stunted education, the dullness in accepting the misdeeds of a politicized judiciary, boncentre, blind greed for profit, the decline of good faith, generated, at least promoted by two world wars, are poor protection against the outbreak of a third that would mean the end of civilization. "

reception

  • The Neue Zürcher Zeitung wrote about the appearance of the German edition in Zurich :

“Seldom before has we had such a direct picture of European anti-fascism: The priest stands next to the communist, Germans and Italians stand next to the other affected nations, the Greeks and Russians, Poles and Yugoslavs, and the Norwegian fisherman and the Greek shepherd appear alongside the writer and intellectual. Ten years after the fall of Nazism, this book has a definite meaning, just as much as these messages speak the same moral language in the face of death and show the reader of 1955 the profound spiritual unity that, beyond all national and ideological differences, the European resistance movement held together. We hardly know a book that is so filled with a desperate love for life. It is precisely the physical presence of death that gives way to the image of a tremendous vital force. "

  • The Italian composer Luigi Nono elected in 1956 from the Humanities for the text of his written in 1956 choral work Il canto sospeso ten farewell letters of women, men and adolescents.
  • On panels at the memorial in Como commemorating the European resistance against the Nazi regime, the Monumento alla Resistenza europea , short passages from eighteen last letters are embedded in their respective original language. Most of the texts come from the volume discussed here.

expenditure

  • Lettere di condannati a morte della Resistenza Europea. Eds. Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, foreword by Thomas Mann. Giulio Einaudi, Turin 1954.
    • Last letters from the European resistance condemned to death. Edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, foreword by Thomas Mann. Steinberg-Verlag, Zurich 1955.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Country Profile History Bulgaria 1923 - 1945
  2. ↑ Country profile history Greece 1940 - 1944
  3. ↑ Country profile history Italy 1922 - 1945
  4. ↑ Country profile history Poland 1939 - 1945
  5. ↑ Country Profile History of Russia 1939 - 1945
  6. ↑ Country profile history Germany 1933 - 1945
  7. ↑ Last letters from the European resistance condemned to death. Edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli. Foreword by Thomas Mann. Steinberg-Verlag, Zurich 1955. pp. XI – XII.
  8. ↑ Source: Supplement special edition Last Letters of Death Convicts from the European Resistance. Edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, foreword by Thomas Mann. Steinberg-Verlag, Zurich 1955.
  9. ↑ Como on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945
  10. ↑ They are the letters and inscriptions from:
    • Marguerite Bervoets (Belgium), teacher and poet, beheaded on August 9, 1944 (documented in: Last Letters to Death Convicts from the European Resistance, edited by Piero Malvezzi and Giovanni Pirelli, foreword by Thomas Mann. Steinberg-Verlag, Zurich 1955, P. 35)
    • Ahmed Tatanov Ammedov (Bulgaria), hanged on May 16, 1944
    • Christian Ulrik Hansen (Denmark), student, shot dead on January 23, 1944 (documented ibid p. 84)
    • Elli Voigt ( Germany ), worker, beheaded on December 8, 1944 (documented ibid p. 136)
    • Jacques Decour (France), writer, shot dead on May 30, 1942
    • Serafim Triantafilou (Greece), lawyer, shot dead on March 26, 1944 (documented ibid p. 242)
    • Pier Amato Perretta (Italy), judge, died November 15, 1944
    • Ratko Zaric (Yugoslavia), student, shot dead on May 4, 1943 (documented ibid p. 341)
    • Adolphe Claude (Luxembourg), worker, beheaded on February 12, 1942 (documented ibid p. 353)
    • Anne Frank ( Netherlands ), Jewish student, Bergen-Belsen in February 1945
    • Borgen Boe (Norway), shot dead on December 29, 1941 (documented there p. 395)
    • Rudolf Fischer (resistance fighter) (Austria), worker, beheaded on January 28, 1943 (documented ibid p. 425)
    • Inscription on a cell wall of the Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw (Poland) (documented there p. 462)
    • Filomon Sirbu (Romania), worker, shot dead on July 17, 1944
    • Irina Malozon (Soviet Union), girl of the Komsomol, shot (documented ibid p. 547)
    • Julius Fucik ( Czechoslovakia ), journalist and writer, beheaded on September 18, 1943 (documented ibid p. 501)
    • István Pataki (Hungary), worker, shot dead on December 24, 1944 (documented ibid p. 536)
    • Chaim ( Galicia ), a 14-year-old boy on behalf of Jews across Europe (documented ibid p. 467)