April 25th 1945, a day of liberation and now a national holiday

I am looking at a picture posted by an Italian friend on facebook of a man in a train compartment in the rush hour.

Nothing you might think odd about that except that he has a  gun slung over his shoulder.  I missed it when I first came across the image and was drawn back by her comment and the date.

She wrote that she found “it fitting, [and] particularly laden with meaning,” because April 25th is a national holiday in Italy and marks both the end of what was left of Mussolini’s fascist state but also the end of the Nazi occupation of Italy on that day in 1945.

Signor Prigile, August 14th 1944

And so I guess the picture was a posed comment on the events of that day eighty years ago.

I would like to have used it but in the absence of copyright details for the present it will just have to sit on facebook and what ever Italian news agency issued it.

In its place there is this picture of Signor Prigile, an Italian partisan in Florence taken on August 14th 1944.

British troops had been ordered to avoid fighting the Germans in the precincts of the city of Florence but Italian Partisans, occupying the Fortress Di Basso exchanged fire with the German snipers that remained after the German forces evacuated Florence.

Now like many of my generation I was brought up on a diet of national stereo types and given the close proximity of the war the crude picture of Italians was that all they ate was  pasta and were all to ready to surrender.

It was an image much hyped by the propaganda of the war years and ignored the many brave Italians who opposed the Fascists both before and after they came to power in 1922.

It also ignored those that against their will were conscripted into the armed forces, to fight first in Abyssinia and Greece and later in North Africa and on the Eastern Front.  Nor is much said about  those who were held in Soviet prisons long after the war and those who never returned.

This I hasten to add is in no way a defence of the fascist regime which so brutally eliminated parliamentary democracy in Italy and did nothing to prevent the exploitation of working people.

Rather it is recognition that there were many Italians who opposed Mussolini and resisted as best they could.  And some who risked their lives to protect allied prisoners of war who had escaped and were  on the run from the German Army.

Corso Giacomo Matteotti on an April afternoon

And I often think of that opposition when we are in the Corso Giacomo Matteotti which is one of my favourite parts of Varese.

Here you can find posh clothes outlets, elegant cafes and wonderful food shops ranging from the expensive bakery to ordinary fruit and veg shops a fishmonger and a butcher.

It is named after the socialist MP who denounced the fascists in the Italian Parliament for election bribery in 1924 and was murdered by them just 11 days later.

So I shall be talking to our Italian family later this evening and asking them how the holiday has gone.

And no sooner had I posted this story last year, than Barbarella sent me this wonderful story of her grandmother.

"I am the grandchild of partisans. My grandmother was a “staffetta”, which translate into relay. 

Liberation Day, April, 1945

She was relaying messages amongst partisan groups who were fighting and hiding in the hills around Bologna. My grandmother was called Albertina (I gave this name as a middle name to my daughter), she used to put messages inside the metal bar handles of her bicycle, then putting the handle bit on top. 

Transporting messages between groups and risking her life. Sometimes she used to have some freshly made pasta for them, when she could afford to make it.

Memorial to the Partisan, 2018

What I woman, I am so proud of her. Passed away in 2006, at the age of 94. It is such a powerful story." of courage.

And this year Barbarello added a link to "Bella ciao", or "Goodbye beautiful"* which was originally an Italian protest song from the 19th century but my Wikipedia tells me "was modified  and adopted as an anthem for Italians resistance movement by the partisans who opposed fascism and the occupying German army.**


Location; Italy

Pictures; Corso Giacomo Matteotti from the collection of Andrew Simpson, Signor Prigile, August 14th, 1944. “This image was created and released by the Imperial War Museum on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs taken, or artworks created, by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that licence, which is considered expired 50 years after their creation and is in the public domain, Wikipedia Commons.",  Liberation day, 1945, courtesy of Barbarello Bonvento, and war memorial to the Partisan, 2018, Intra, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Bella ciao, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CI3lhyNKfo&vidve=5727...

**Bell ciao, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_ciao

May 5th 1945 …… a day of liberation and now a national holiday

Liberation Days are not events we commemorate here in the UK, but then we haven’t been invaded and subjugated by a foreign power for centuries*

It is of course a different picture in other parts of the world, and you do not have to go any further than mainland Europe to experience national holidays which mark the liberation of countries from the control of Nazi Germany.

Last month, the Italian side of our family had their “liberation holiday” on April 25th and today, May 5th my friends and acquaintances across the Netherlands will be doing the same.

According to one source, “Liberation Day (Dutch: Bevrijdingsdag) is a public holiday in the Netherlands celebrated each year on 5 May to mark the end of the occupation by Nazi Germany during World War II. It follows the Remembrance of the Dead (Dodenherdenking) on 4 May.

The nation was liberated by Canadian forces, British infantry divisions, the British I Corps, the 1st Polish Armoured Division, American, Belgian, Dutch and Czechoslovak troops. 

Parts of the country, in particular the south-east, were liberated by the British Second Army which included American and Polish airborne forces (see Operation Market Garden) and French airbornes (see Operation Amherst). 

On 5 May 1945, at Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen, I Canadian Corps commander Lieutenant-General Charles Foulkes and Oberbefehlshaber Niederlande commander-in-chief Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz reached an agreement on the capitulation of all German forces in the Netherlands. 

The capitulation document was signed the next day (no typewriter had been available the prior day) in the auditorium of Wageningen University, located next door.

After liberation in 1945, Liberation Day was celebrated every five years. 

In 1990 the day was declared a national holiday when liberation would be remembered and celebrated every year. Festivals are held in most places in the Netherlands with parades of veterans and musical festivals throughout the whole country”.**

It was Jürgen Beekers, who first alerted me to Bevrijdingsdag, after we had corresponded about the search for a young British soldier who was killed during the liberation of his part of the Netherlands in October 1944.

Jürgen is part of a very special project which encourages residents in the region around the municipality of Nederweert to adopt the war grave of a Commonwealth serviceman buried in the local British Military Cemetery.***

It is a project I have written about already and I think it is fitting to return to it today.

I am waiting for confirmation of the birthday of Arthur Chetham who was killed between the villages of Asten, Liessel and Neerkant on October 27th 1944 and is in the war cememtery.

And once we have that date Jürgen, will be able to lay flowers at the grave on Private Chetham’s birthday.

It arrived today  and l know he was born on October7th 1924.

So, for now I shall  be thinking of Jürgen, his family and the others I know in the Netherlands on this special day.

And also of the 365 Commonwealth servicemen buried in that war cemetery and the the activities of those in Nederweert to honour their sacrifice.

Location; Nederweert, Netherlands

Pictures;  Nederweert War Cemetery , 1945-2021, courtesy of The Adoption Graves Foundation of the Nederweert War Cemetery, and the collection of Jürgen Beekers

*With the caveat that some in Wales, Scotland and Ireland may question that comment

**Liberation Day, Netherlands, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_Day_(Netherlands)

*** The Adoption Graves Foundation of the Nederweert War Cemetery https://adoptiongravesnederweert.com