A medal (at last) for Corrado

Corrado Capecchi, soldier
Carabiniere deported to Nazi concentration camps after September 8, he hasn’t been here for four and a half years. But in the last days, in February 2012, a letter to his son Alexander arrived from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. It is the letter that officially gives Corrado a medal of honour for the sacrifice and suffering endured. A medal that symbolically fills the silence that for many (and too many) years has surrounded the history of those 600,000 Italian soldiers of a lost army, made prisoners following the armistice of September 8, 1943, and in a day turned from allies to enemies, but that said “no” to the fascist offerings of the Republic of Salò.
The medal does not exist yet. It will be delivered as soon as it is ready. But it is the letter that counts.
For years, broken the silence with which for so long, like so many other deportees, had tried to soothe the pain of a year and a half of oppression and cruelty, no longer considered a man but a tool, Corrado had struggled in his own way against the many tricks suffered by the Italian military internees: the long silence until 1977, the German loose change announced in 2000 but recognized only to deported civilians.” I fight not for the money but for a principle” he repeated each time.
Then at the end of 2006, the Italian Parliament announced, with a law, the granting of at least a medal. Corrado passed away (at least) with this consolation. And now the medal has been officially and finally granted.

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