PARTISAN REVIEW
To disavow him formally was not feasible. By calling the atten–
tion of the public to an early Fascist martyr who had been of the
Jewish faith, the purpose of the anti-Semitic propaganda might very
well be defeated. Even worse, doubt might be cast upon the purity
of other heroes. To keep him in the roll of Brescia martyrs would
leave the Secretary open to attack from the zealots of Italo-German
collaboration. Something had to be done, thought the Secretary, and
soon, but without facing the issue squarely. Silent disappearance,
he concluded, would be the best solution.
Thus one day the chapel was closed to the public under the
excuse of repairs. When it was reopened some time later, Mario's
cenotaph was not there any longer but no empty space could be
noted. By a delicate work of masonry, the whole end wall of the
chapel had been brought forward, the ancient architectural motifs
had been reproduced so that only an exceptionally careful observer
could find out that Mario's cenotaph was missing.
Still, Mario's fame lingered in the city: enough to spare his
mother and sisters the many little indignities which otherwise anti–
Semitism, unpopular as it was in Italy, would have nevertheless
inflicted on them.
But in 1943, after the Italian surrender, the Germans took ac–
tual control of northern Italy. The time of petty insults was over. The
Germans were out for real flesh and blood.
Mario's mother was too sick to escape the country or even to
go
in
hiding and
his
sisters- two old spinsters by that time-lived
in
a state of constant fear. Many of their friends had already been
deported. The situation was growing worse with the approach of
the Allied armies in the early spring of 1945. So that they finally
felt that they had only one way to safety open: to demand protection
for the mother and sisters of a Fascist martyr. The remembrance
of so many years of noble aloofness was troublesome. It seemed to
them that they were destroying the last refuge of honesty where they
had kept alive Mario's true memory, not ridiculed by a political
disguise. But fear of atrocious
de~th
prevailed. One day, the. younger
sister put on a black dress, resembling the mourning attire which
she had seen worn by the relatives of fallen heroes on ceremonial
days, and, without telling her mother, went to visit the dreaded Fascist
leader of the whole region.
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