Dedicated to the victims, those who fell into service at the hands of terrorism from north to south, in the bloodiest period in Italy, from 1956 to 1980. “Anni bui”, written by journalist and historian Salvatore Lordi, is released on May 3 in bookstores. The volume, published by Bibliotheka Edizioni (18 euros), tells a long story of pain in 536 pages, marked by the ferocity of groups or movements that have remained in the memory of Italians. Not only the BR, the NAR or Prima linea but also for example the South Tyrolean irredentism that only in the sixties put South Tyrol to fire and sword, leaving dozens of uniformed men on the ground on the border with Austria.
The release date is not accidental, so close to that May 9, sadly famous for the massacre in via Fani, and became by law the day of remembrance of the victims of internal and international terrorism, and of the massacres. Listening to the testimonies of wives, children, brothers, relatives of the many policemen, carabinieri, financiers and Army officers who fell at the hands of the terrorists, Lordi brings to light untold stories, pages dedicated to ordinary boys, men and women.
There are those who sketch the scene of his marriage, those who remember a walk in the park and those who, like their children, receive gifts on their birthday or a slap for not having studied. Alongside these remnants of life, an evolving society emerges in the background, leaving behind it the legacy of an iron education and many sacrifices to get by.
“Perhaps in the last forty years everything, or almost everything, has been said about a phenomenon that has torn a country and brought it to the brink of civil war – explains Salvatore Lordi. Little is known, indeed nothing, about those who, wearing a uniform, were killed by political violence ”. In the madness of those years, some of these servants of the state hardly remember a face, perhaps the road where they met their death. With “Dark Years” Lordi tries to give back to all those carabinieri, financiers, policemen and Army soldiers, the most tender and intimate moments lived within their families.
“I entered on tiptoe and with respect in their homes where, often, my gaze was kidnapped by the photos of their loved one resting on a dresser and slowly, in the presence of those images, I collected exciting stories of widows and children, trying to bring out extraordinary lives that, in many cases, had been deliberately erased from memories ”.
The long work also collects testimonies from the heads of the Police Forces (Police, Carabinieri and Guardia di Finanza), and is introduced by a preface by the magistrate Guido Salvini: “Salvatore Lordi’s research – writes Salvini – fills a blank page of our memory, brings to light stories that until now had remained only personal and family memories, at the risk of thinning out and disappearing. But thanks to this book, which should also be read in schools, this will not be the case ”.