The  courtyard of the Casotto  today

After November 17 1931 my mother and my Grandmother remained alone,  in  1932 they left the suburb Sassi and they never returned to the old house the Casotto di Superga.

Due to economic problems my mother was forced to leave the school and to accept a badly paid job in a textile company in Turin. During all her life she has never cared about politics, my grandmother concealed from my mother the gloomy past for fear of retaliations.

So it happened that after WW II my mother married my father, a former soldier in the Mussolini army during the civil war after 1943. My Grandmother, from father side, was a block warden when Fascism ruled Italy, she was also a police informer for that regime that Bertolino Pietro had so fiercely  fought against.

Irony of destiny.

I  am the grandson of Pietro, I was born many years after his death.

I lived, I studied, and I have been prospering on the money from the fascist branch of my family.

But their expectations have not come through.

I have not become a fascist, enrichment for consumption purposes does not influence me, Motherland-Italy does not call me up, greedy careerisms does not beguile me, racism and maschilism are far away from me.

And that is not all.

I was born on the same day, July 12, at the same hour of Bertolino Pietro, an astonishing coincidence.

Many people say there is a close resemblance between us.

I too always hated wars although I never experienced it.

Irony of destiny or  something exists beyond the horizon?

Sometimes in the night when all is quiet and silent, it seems to me I can hear a faint whisper as if  my grandfather Bertolino Pietro wanted to tell me something through time.

That life must be lived through with dignity, that life must have a meaning although sometimes sorrow and emptiness make us think the opposite.

Perhaps my grandfather really has come back.