After more than seventy years he finds an old letter and discovers that his father had been a hero in the fight against Nazi-fascism during the Second World War by helping Jews and foreign prisoners of war.
The story, which emerges on the eve of Remembrance Day, comes from Macerata and has as its protagonist Mario Borroni, at the time a carabiniere in his early twenties.
"After the death of my father and then of my mother Luciana - her son Renzo Borroni, 75, tells ANSA for the first time - while arranging my parents' things I found, at the bottom of a drawer, an old letter signed by Lilly Breitel, a woman who, thanks to the contemporary history professor Annalisa Cegna, I discovered was a Jew of Polish origin, interned in the concentration camps first in Lanciano (Chieti), then in that of Pollenza and then in Sforzacosta in the province of Macerata".
"A touching letter that gave meaning to the fleeting stories that dad sometimes told about the war", explains Renzo.
"Today we can say, with a sense of profound gratitude - we read in the typed letter dated 15 September 1944 - that you, in that period, under the uniform of a carabiniere, always acted with the spirit of a patriot, and always served the cause of the Liberation, because, for example, she, we remember very well, helped many English prisoners to escape from the hospital and always effectively hindered the requests in this regard that the fascist authorities made".
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