The notes of 'Silence' and the laying of a wreath in memory of those who fell in the massacre, placed among the ruins of the little church of San Martino in Monte Sole.
Thus began the visit of the President of the Italian Republic and the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Sergio Mattarella and Frank-Walter Steinmeier to the Bologna Apennines, on the occasion of the official celebrations, in Marzabotto, of the 80th anniversary of the massacre carried out by Nazi troops led by Major Walter Reder between 29 September and 5 October 1944, which caused the death of 770 civilians, including women, children and the elderly, in the territories between the municipalities of Marzabotto, Grizzana Morandi and Monzuno.
"We are here - says Mattarella - to bow our heads together before so many lives cruelly broken, to fill with the most intense feelings of solidarity those chasms that the inhuman Nazi-Fascist ferocity has opened in these lands , in these communities. We are here to remember, because memory calls for responsibility. In the Second World War we reached the bottom of the abyss. The barbarity, the cancellation of all human dignity ".
Again: « Italy, Germany and Europe were able to rise from that hell, building freedom, peace, democracy, rights, community, a new security. Our parents, our grandparents did not abandon themselves to resignation. They were able to transform the most unspeakable and inexplicable pain into a generative force. In a new era. In a system that, although imperfect, intended to look at respect for the dignity of every person. It was not easy to rebuild a continent from the material and moral ruins to which Nazism and Fascism had condemned it. It required courage and sacrifice».
" Almost 800 victims, almost 200 children. Marzabotto and Monte Sole are among the most shocking symbols of the strategy of annihilation that accompanied the desire for domination, the racial myth, nationalist oppression, in short that ideological mix that pushed Nazism - and their accomplices, including the fascist regime - to pursue the catastrophic project of conquering Europe and emptying it of its history ."
