UNIQUE THOUGHT – SERIES A DEATHS AND SERIES B DEATHS
Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Milano, Gorla and the massacre of the 184 innocent
The sky is damn blue over Milan, the morning of 20 October 1944. So blue that the primary school teacher Francesco Crispi, in the Gorla area, she is worried: «It's too clear, they could bomb. We are forced to go to school, but you who can…», he says, meeting little Graziella Ghisalberti on the bridge of the Martesana canal, 7 years, holding hands with his mother and his little cousin Edoardo di 6. Instead Graziella and Edoardo, with their black aprons, they walk through the door, like every day since they returned from Brianza, where they were displaced for fear of war: "The war is over now anyway", the adults repeated. And instead the war in Milan had to deliver the final blow, the most devastating.
In second class that day they learned capital letters and Graziella had just completed a whole page of D… A gesture that is still old today 77 he often repeats with his finger, tracing many imaginary capital Ds on the table… «At that moment, all 11 e 14 – he says – the small alarm sounded, American planes were arriving, we all had to run down to the shelter under the school".
But at 11 e 24 most of the 200 and more children are still on the stairs when the big alarm sounds, 35 planes are already there and clusters of free-falling bombs stand out against that clear sky. They want us 240 seconds from the moment of release for them to touch the ground: the flight lasts so long 350 bombs hitting Gorla and Precotto, and with malicious precision one slips into the stairwell.
The school explodes, the shelter collapses, students and teachers fall. «In the morning the lessons ended at 11 e 30, so at the sound of the alarm my friends and I went out to run home in Viale Monza – says Graziella Ghisalberti –, but when I looked up and saw all those bombs falling I turned back towards the school to escape to the shelter. Already at night I was terrified of Pippo (the plane that made raids in the dark, ndr), at that moment I was dying of fear, but at the school door the boys' teacher, Norma Gazzina, he blocked my way, I screamed and she didn't want to let me in, he sent me away…».
The bombs surprise her halfway, in via Fratelli Pozzi, where the little girl takes refuge in a doorway with the school bag on her head to protect herself, Then, torn and covered in dirt, between rows of rubble houses, arrives home. He doesn't yet know that his school has been hit, he doesn't know that almost all of them are dead, but she is the only one to have returned and the mothers of the building crowd around her: «Where is Bice? You saw the Oscar?».
Names that still hammer in her head like remorse, the condemnation of the survivors: "My “guilt” was to save myself. They sent me back to Brianza because the other mothers couldn't stand my voice when I called mother". A word that sounded like blasphemy, in that neighborhood. On the other side of the canal, still today in via Tofane at number 5 a plaque commemorates 22 children who lived there, all died in the school. «Even Luisa Rumi – says Graziella – had to go to her grandparents in Monza, because in his house all four children were saved, while his aunt had lost two children. The teacher “bad” it was actually saving my life, instead she died with the others. My “guilt” I redeemed it by fighting all my life because i 184 Little Martyrs of Gorla are not forgotten".
It is a strange and terrible fate that the 20 October of 70 years ago he decided who should live or die. The male fifth was saved because it was on the ground floor and the teacher Modena made the children climb over the window. For all the others, or almost all, the description given by Don Ferdinando Frattino is valid, young priest still loved in the neighborhood today because he immediately dug in, saving some children, will write later: “I rushed to the school. The stairs had collapsed along with the children who were coming down. We found the students who had reached the bottom first sitting as if they were asleep…”. Edoardo's mother also came running, look up at the smoking ruins, on the upper floors he saw a body dangling from a radiator: it was a bimba. «Everyone will be safe in the shelter», he shouted, digging with his nails. Edoardo was found by the firefighters only the following day and mother Angioletta took him into her arms facing Muti (the military corps of the Social Republic), who did not allow the dead to be taken away: «He took him home and with vinegar he insisted on bringing him back to life». Antonio Pannaccese, 8 years, he was a lively child and often lied, but mother had been clear, "I'll kill you if you lie again", and that very day he had obeyed her. Gianni Smidili instead made a mistake and was spared.
Fate again. The Crispi school ran two shifts, until 11 and a half children from slightly wealthier families, then the children of large families came in so that they could at least take advantage of the lunch: the first all died, everyone save the seconds… Only six people were pulled out alive from the rubble, «but even today everyone is shocked – comments Graziella –, none of us ever managed to go down into a cellar again…».
Three minutes earlier the same bombers had hit the Precotto school squarely, pulverizing it, but all the children were saved. Among them Piera Nanetti, 6 years, first elementary: «That morning I didn't want to go because the wind had swept the sky and they could have bombed, but my mom took me there. I remember the bombers, you could hear from the noise that they were heavy with bombs… They dumped them on us, even though a large cross was painted on the roof of the schools". Luckily the Precotto students were already in the courtyard playing, so going down to the shelter was a moment. «We were down there when the world exploded and we were buried. I was screaming with my mouth full of rubble. By the grace of God Don Carlo Porro immediately identified the best place to dig to extract us, finding the emergency exit, otherwise we would all have died because then the shelter collapsed". They had taken off at 7.58 US planes flew from Foggia and the objective was to bomb the most active Milanese factories, Breda, the Alfa Romeo and the Isotta Fraschini.
But everything went wrong: the route turned out to be wrong and the planes got rid of their cargo to return to Foggia light. US military documents (traced only in 1994 by Achille Rastelli) they talked about failed mission and “collateral damage”, then everything was “forgotten”. No president of the Republic has ever come to Gorla, no school text talks about the massacre, «perhaps because it was the work of the Allies and not the Germans…». They haven't forgotten, but, the family members of 184 Little Martyrs, that for seventy years every 20 of October they find themselves praying on the spot where the Crispi once stood. Today in its place an ossuary preserves his remains, in the crypt he engraved in gold the words of a sorrowful Christ: «And I told you to love each other like brothers».
