"In the war on Covid we must all be partisans and responsible. To defeat the pandemic there is only one weapon, vaccination".
Talking is Maffeo Marinelli, 96, one of the last partisans in Italy who has received the first dose of Moderna a few weeks ago.
At ANSA he opens the doors of his house in via Alfano in Pesaro, where he has created a sort of memory room in one of the two bedrooms.
On the walls he hung pictures and panels with photographs, newspaper articles and even a couple of letters from Pope Francis addressed to him.
In that room there is much of his history, which saw him as a partisan at the end of the Second World War and then also a protagonist in the tragedy of Marcinelle, in Belgium, where he had moved to work in the mines. A blue jacket and tricolor handkerchief with the Anpi crest around his neck, Maffeo, a few days after the anniversary of 25 April, alternates the stories of the war years with those of the days in which he found himself acting as an interpreter among Italian families, who had lost loved ones in the mine, and the local Belgian authorities. "I was a partisan for 11 months between Pesaro, Jesi and Fano, many times I risked being taken prisoner. Now - he says - we are all called to live a new world conflict, against the coronavirus. I would never have imagined living all this in 96 years ". "If we want to defeat this virus we must all feel partisans, everyone is called to do his duty as a citizen ", Marinelli remarks in a loud voice, addressing young people in particular:" if we want to defeat Covid there is no other way, I say it to everyone, even my grandchildren ". Instead, he recommends to politicians" to be less selfish. "
