THEon April 3, 1944, a few days after the attack of via Rasella, The men of the infamous Koch band breaks in via Gregoriana 5 to check those present.
Simonetta and Mita, daughters of Giovanni Antonio Colonna of Cesarò and Barbara Antonelli, and their boyfriends Gaio Visconti Modrone and Uberto Corti are arrested; Also present at this “harmless meeting” also the Marquis Paternò delle Sciare. The five will be conducted to Regina Coeli and two of them in via Tasso.
It will be discovered that short and paternity of the skiing with the help of the father of San Gregorio al Celio, Don Bernardo ignesti, they were at the head of a partisan bandthe partisan command, in support of the clandestine military front. It is an extraordinary story that the scholar Rossella Pace tells in his book Rome, via Gregoriana 5published by FrancoAngeli.
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Vangi Gilbert).
Already in the 1920s the Palazzo dei Colonna di Cesarò had been attached by the fascist police, as well as for the anti -fascist activity of the Duke, Especially for the intellectual relief of home women, who had given birth to an anti -fascist network. Thanks to safe covers and shelters, he had branched and structured himself by attracting the most important cultural personalities of the time.
Resistance in the living room
Emmelina de Renzis Sonnino, grandmother of the sisters of Cesarò, managed the most famous anthroposophical living room in the capital in via Gregoriana 5 in via Gregoriana 5: He was the only translator in Italy of Rudolf Steiner’s works. It was no less to have been the living room of Countess Antonelli and then of her daughters.
“Rome, via Gregoriana 5” by Rossella Pace (FrancoAngeli).
Not surprisingly, In 1942 The New York Times He reported the news of the first arrest of Simonetta Colonna di Cesarò For organizing together with the Countess Giulianella Senni a party in which exponents of the American embassy had participated.
In the “open city”, the women of the aristocratic elites As well as Giuliana Benzoni, Fulvia Ripa di Meana, Ippolita Solaro del Borgo or Isabelle Colonna they made available to that network of solidarity that animated Rome during the occupation their ingenuitytheir sensitivity, their knowledge and their personal sacrifice.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.
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