Salerno's duty to remember Giovanni Amendola

Amendola is a shining figure in Italian history. Born in Naples but the son of a noble Salerno family of jurists past and present, a liberal and journalist, he was elected to parliament here in Salerno in 1919 and subsequently appointed Minister of the Colonies, always operating with the strength and enthusiasm of our southern Italy in his intense daily political activity. He was a fierce opponent of Mussolini because, among other things, he attempted to prevent the March on Rome, but King Victor Emmanuel III refused to sign the decree declaring a state of siege, so his opposition to the regime soon became critical, determined, and uncompromising. After the Matteotti assassination, politicians, historians, and philosophers met in a circle of free, noble, and distinguished thinkers, and thus Giovanni Amendola, along with Piero Gobetti, Piero Calamandrei, Gaetano Salvemini, Benedetto Croce, and Luigi Einaudi, the second President of the Republic, continued to make historic decisions. Giovanni Amendola led a mixed group of socialists, Catholics, and liberals, an event that later became known as the "Aventine Secession" because, with the strength of one who believes and works, he demanded the resignation of Mussolini's government, hoping, in vain, for the support of King Victor Emmanuel III. It was precisely this strenuous intransigence that drove fascist violence to organize a thug squad—as conceived in Rome—organizing a party rally in Montecatini, where Amendola was briefly recovering and receiving medical treatment. He was ambushed, savagely attacked, and beaten so badly that all attempts to obtain immediate treatment proved futile, and he was transferred to Paris in the following days.

Here he underwent several surgeries that never restored his independence, and his subsequent life was a true ordeal. He spent his last days in Cannes, far from his hometown, where he died on April 7, 1926. His remains were transferred to Naples in 1950, where they rest in the Poggioreale Monumental Cemetery with the same gravestone as in Cannes, which he personally commissioned: "Giovanni Amendola lives here... waiting." Salerno and its institutions have a duty to remind future generations of Giovanni Amendola—a democratic hero—and an indomitable champion of these principles and natural rights, which he defended and paid for with his life, condemning, at all times and in all places, violence in all its forms and manifestations because, as he always stated, "freedom is not a gift but a duty."

(*:lawyer)