Page 25 - MARCELLO FANTONI

his wife Giuliana Treves and their elderly servant transported him out of that anguish filled context for a
Amedeo, lived together with the Fantons for the entire brief moment,and he comments intensely on only this.
crisis period, truly facing an enormous danger.Witness The return route, the delivering of the plans, and the
to this is the letter written six years later by Giuliana events of the following day have been indescribably
Treves Artom, in which she expresses her heart felt erased from Fantoni’s mind. He assures us that he has
gratitude to every member of the family for having tried for years to recall what happened after that
shown such generosity and humane welcoming.“….To episode, but nothing comes to him. He has catalyzed,
the wife of your friend Eugenio,”, she writes addressing in this episode, his extraneousness to these facts, of
her dear friends,“ who you knew just briefly and that which he was the unfortunate protagonist, the
the events of the last years had immersed in complete consequent bitterness, and his strong desire, never
dejection and darkness, your so immediate welcoming, diminished, to return to being an artist and to devoted
full of affection and without hesitations, brought not the rest of his life to his work.
only materially salvation but also restored, by means of Marcello Fantoni continued to collaborate with the
your example, the faith in the brotherhood of man” 1 T.C.N.L. in the days that followed the decisive battle for
To conclude this section of “war” memories we the liberation of Florence, in the summer of 1944,
would like to cite an episode particularly dear to defending, together with his group, the area assigned to
Marcello Fantoni, which is still today capable of them between Piazza San Marco and Piazza della
evoking such intense emotions and thoughts as to be Libertà. He was, fortunately, not wounded during the
truly moving.Again, in the summer of 1944, since the battle nor was anyone in his family. Beatrice Fantoni,
Marchese Aldobrando Medici Tornaquinci was too who had sworn to adopt a child orphaned by the war if
exposed and was being watched closely by the police, her husband and children came through the war
the Liberation Committee needed someone to go to unharmed, took into her home a seven year old boy and
Milan who could act more freely and move about everyone in the family embraced him with great joy.
without being recognized, to pick up the plans for the Once the city was liberated from the Germans, and
Liberation of Florence. Marcello Fantoni, who, we the allied forces definitively established themselves here,
repeat again, joined the organization without any on August 11, 1944, the first administrators elected by
particular passion, decided not to back away from this the Liberation Committee took their place in the
task, which was assigned to him. He accepted this Palazzo Vecchio, proceeded by the sounding of the
delicate mission, going by motorcycle to the Lombard Martinella.Renato Fantoni,as he was an exponent of the
capital and returning by train with the plans sewn into Liberal Party and a participant in the Resistance, was
the waistband of his pants. Getting off the train in the nominated assessore in the municipal government which
environs of Bologna ( the advancing of the “Gothic was lead by Gaetano Pieraccini, the first mayor of the
line” did not permit him to continue further) he liberated city and celebrated scientist and socialist.Thus
remembers resting in a field with other passengers,who began that slow and difficult task of reconstruction of the
were also directed toward Florence. city. Freed from the nightmare of Nazi occupation, the
There are a number of voids in his memory of that city needed to face notable practical and administrative
day, that do not allow him to determine exactly where difficulties: the difficulty in finding water, wood, and
they were, nor what road across the Apennines they transportation, which the Germans had commandeered,
were taking to go home. He remembers perfectly, on for food stuffs. “But,” as Pieraccini had the occasion to
the contrary, that while they were lying in the field, a write several years later, “ the affective and uniting
group of German soldiers passed by them and, while sentiments of the members of the municipal
they drew closer, Fantoni remembers an intense smell government, the cooperation of the functionaries, the
of fresh bread. The Germans were in fact returning employees, and the town workers, the agreement and
from a bakery with a number of fresh loves wrapped in faith of the populous, and above all the imperious desire
blankets. Hunger gripped his stomach more than fear to ransom the painful past, stimulated everyone to make
and this hunger must have been so perceptible as to a serious contribution to the renewing of the life of each
induce the last soldier in the line to throw him a loaf of person and the community. A solidarity of effort
bread.“He must have seen the eyes of hunger,” Fantoni overcame barriers of class and political ideologies; the
tells us, and still today he gets teary-eyed. This memory affective and intellectual elements harmonized under the
still moves him because it give rise, today as then, to
1
bitter reflection.The absurdity of finding himself there M. BRAMBILLA, G. FANTONI, Resistenza Liberale a Firenze,
at that moment exposing himself to such danger, and Roma 1995, p. 51.
2 The text is taken from a letter written by Gaetano Pieraccini to
the absurdity of the war that forces two boy of the same
Mario Fabiani, on the occasion of the publishing of a review by the
age to be enemies. This act of unexpected generosity
Municipality of Florence dedicated to the years 1944-51,published in
on the part of the German soldier, who on the front A. MARCOLIN, Firenze 1943-45.Anni di terrore e di fame. Fascisti e
line could have killed him or been killed by him, antifascisti – Addio camicia nera, Firenze, 1994, p. 95.

23