«Innocents killed because they were Italians», «no, because they were anti-fascists».

The controversy breaks out over the words with which Giorgia Meloni wanted to remember the 79th anniversary of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre .

«Today – said the prime minister – Italy honors the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre. Seventy-nine years ago 335 Italians were barbarously murdered by the Nazi occupation troops in retaliation for the partisan attack in via Rasella. A massacre that marked one of the deepest and most painful wounds inflicted on our national community: 335 innocent Italians massacred just because they were Italian . It is up to all of us - Institutions, civil society, schools and the world of information - to remember those martyrs and to tell the younger generations in particular what happened on that terrible March 24, 1944. May memory never be a mere exercise in style but a duty civic duty to be exercised every day".

«It should be specified - the reply of the president of the PNA Gianfranco Pagliarulo - that the 335 martyrs were Italians, but they were chosen on the basis of a selection that affected the anti-fascists, the resistants, the political opponents, the Jews . It must be added that the list of some of those who, as Giorgia Meloni affirmed, were barbarously murdered by the Nazi occupation troops, was compiled with the complicity of the questore Pietro Caruso, the minister of the interior of the republic of Salò Guido Buffarini Guidi, the war criminal Pietro Koch, all fascists».

Nicola Fratoianni also attacked: «No, President Meloni, 335 people were not killed by the Nazi-fascists at the Fosse Ardeatine because they were Italians. But because they were anti-fascists, Jews, partisans. Will she be able to write that word one day? anti-fascist ".

Pd and Action also stigmatize the words of the prime minister, "removing or distorting history is equivalent to denying it", declares the deputy Daniela Ruffino.

, followed by Defense Minister Guido Crosetto. In absolute silence, with great emotion of the relatives present, all 335 names of the victims of the Nazi massacre were spelled out. On the screen the black and white faces of the martyrs. The silence then exploded, at the end of the reading of the long list, in applause.