Italian President Sergio Mattarella warned that war has returned to cast its shadow over the present day, saying ambitions of power and domination are resurfacing in unprecedented forms, in a message marking the 82nd anniversary of the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre.
Mattarella recalled that SS units, with the complicity of Italian fascists, carried out the killings on the morning of August 12, 1944, murdering women, elderly people, and children across Sant'Anna and the hamlets of Stazzema. He called the atrocity a symbol of the abyss into which wars can plunge, erasing human dignity and said the Republic feels a duty to remember those innocents killed without mercy.
Commemoration, Mattarella said, is both an act of responsibility and of liberation, noting that the defeat of Nazi fascism opened the path to Italy's rebirth. He urged citizens to defend peace, freedom, democracy, and rights every day.