(Adnkronos) – Foreign minister Antonio Tajani is attending a ceremony at the Ardeatine Caves monument in Rome on Saturday to commemorate the 81st anniversary of Italy’s Liberation Day marking the end of the World War II Nazi German occupation and fascism, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
Mausoleum of Ardeatine Caves is located at the site of a notorious massacre where on 24 March, 1944, Nazi police executed 335 men and boys in a reprisal for the partisan bombing the previous day of a police unit in Rome, which killed 33 officers.
Tajani will lay a laurel wreath at the plaque at the entrance to the Ardeatine Caves – a national memorial site – followed by a minute of silence in memory of the 355 victims of the massacre, according to the foreign ministry statement.
Tajani will then travel to Ferentino (Frosinone) in southern Lazio, where, he will lay a wreath at the World War II Memorial at the Rotonda di Vascello. The monument also bears a plaque commemorating Don Giuseppe Morosini, a military chaplain who joined the anti-Nazi Resistance and was executed on 3 April 1944 at Forte Bravetta in Rome.
“In recognition of his contribution to the Liberation struggle, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valour, and his name is today remembered as a symbol of clerical resistance and sacrifice for freedom,” said the foreign ministry statement.
Tajani also paid tribute on Thursday to diplomat Francesco Babuscio Rizzo, who saved the lives of hundreds of exiled and persecuted individuals during the Nazi-Fascist occupation of Rome between 1943 and 1944, the statement noted.
World War II ended in Italy on 2 May 1945 with the total surrender of German and RSI (German puppet state Republic of Salo) forces to the Allied forces, marking the definitive defeat of Nazism and Fascism in the country.
