The installation of a “stone” in front of San Polo 2305 on January 28.Giovanni Gervasoni belonged to the Waldensian Protestant denomination and was active in the Resistance (“arrested as a politician,” that is, for political reasons). That was two strikes against him.
It may seem that I have decided to dedicate my blog to war memorials (and it does begin to seem that way), but I promise I will be broadening the scope and lightening the atmosphere very soon. But not quite yet, because the other morning I joined a large group of people who came to witness the installation of a so-called “stumbling stone” (Stolperstein, in German; pietra d’inciampo in Italian). At the risk of appearing frivolous, let me mention that plenty of Venice’s masegni, or paving stones, are fully capable of tripping people up all by themselves. It happens every day. But these are different.
The “stones” on display the day before their installation. The sixth stone replaces one in remotest Cannaregio which was hacked out and taken away — stolen — by unknown hands last year. (veneziatoday.it)
These “stones” are concrete cubes 10 cm (3.9 inches) on each side which bear a brass plate inscribed with the names of persons who were deported to the Nazi death camps; they are placed in the pavement in front of the house from which that person was taken (usually their home).
The majority of the victims were Jews, but you also risked deportation if you belonged to any of the following categories of non-ideal humans: Romani people, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, blacks, members of the Communist or Social Democratic parties or the anti-Nazi Resistance, the Christian opposition (Catholic and Protestant), Freemasons, military deserters, International Brigades soldiers from the Spanish Civil War, escape helpers, conscientious objectors, capitulators, “habitual criminals,” looters, persons charged with treason, military disobedience or undermining the Nazi military, as well as Allied soldiers.
The first “stone” was placed on December 16, 1992, in front of the City Hall in Cologne, Germany; it is inscribed with the first lines of Heinrich Himmler’s orders for the beginning of deportations on December 16, 1942. (photo: Willy Horsch)
German artist Gunter Demnig began this project in 1992 — he hand-makes each “stone” — and as of October 23, 2018 there were 70,000 in more than 1,200 towns and cities across Europe. The first 12 in Venice were put in place in 2014; the city now counts 78 (including the Lido and San Servolo). For anyone wishing to see any (or all) of the stones in Venice, here is a map.
But why set the memorial into the street? One would expect to see it discreetly placed on a wall, perhaps, but the setting deliberately recalls an anti-Semitic saying in Nazi Germany when someone tripped on a paving stone: “A Jew must be buried there.” Furthermore, as Nazis destroyed Jewish cemeteries they would break up the tombstones, using the pieces in the sidewalks where countless passing feet would desecrate them.
Six “stones” were installed on January 28. The first was near Campo Sant’Agostin, and I estimate that about 50 people were present for the ceremony. First, the speechmaking: (L to R) Paola Mar, city councilor for tourism; Ermelinda Damiano, President of the city council; an unidentified woman who might be representing the German Center for Venetian Studies; Paolo Navarro Dina of the Jewish Community (and ace reporter for the Gazzettino), and Mario Borghi of the Istituto Veneziano per la Storia della Resistenza e della Societa’ Contemporanea (IVESER).The representative of the Waldensian community (left) gave a brief speech outlining Gervasoni’s life. Mario Borghi (right) reminded onlookers of the possibility to contribute to the project by “adopting” a stone, paying the 120 euros cost of its creation and installation.Everyone listened very closely, when they weren’t checking their phone.
Giovanni Gervasoni was born into a modest Venetian family and studied to become an elementary school teacher. In 1930 he converted to Protestantism, joining the Waldensian Methodist community and working tirelessly in a group which distributed anti-Fascist publications.
Arrested as “a subversive” for the first time in 1932, he began a life of fleeing, hiding, and being under constant surveillance. “His political activity caused him to travel frequently between Venice and Padova,” recalled Alberto Bragaglia, a journalist and Waldensian, quoted in an article on nev.it. Bragaglia’s father, who was then an adolescent, told him that he remembered “a tall, lanky man who would suddenly appear at home and stayed as a guest for several periods of time.”
In 1935 he founded, with some men from the congregation, another group dedicated to the clandestine distribution of material from Giustizia eLiberta‘, an anti-Fascist Resistance group. Just a few months later, in April, he was arrested again and sent to the island of Ventotene, one of the regime’s best-known penal colonies for political prisoners. There he began, with fellow-prisoner Dr. Romola Quarzola, to try to secretly send anti-Fascist tracts to the mainland. Discovered, he was sent to prison in Rome and then Civitavecchia.
In December, 1938 he was sent to the island of Ponza, a prison island near Ventotene; after an extension of his sentence, he was finally liberated in July, 1943, the conclusion of eight years of incarceration. Undaunted, he returned to Venice and began to work as a partisan in collaboration with the Anglo-American forces. Arrested again on January 3, 1944, he was sent to Dachau and killed on February 17, 1945.
The orange-colored countries are those where “stumbling stones” have been placed. (Cirdan, Wikimedia Commons)
I hope this summary hasn’t bored you; I’ve given it to demonstrate the central point of all the thousands of “stones” across Europe. Gervasoni was only 36 when he died, having spent 15 years, roughly half his life, working against the Nazi-Fascist regime. What this small brass plaque represents, brightly and bravely, isn’t his death, but his life.
The first time I saw this, I concluded that it must be symbolic, and that the symbolism was beyond me, and furthermore I couldn’t interpret the image in mosaic below it. The inscription “Il Veneto alle sue partigiane” translates as “The Veneto to its (female) partisans,” so I knew it was, or had been, important.
(For some reason this post registers as having been published several days ago, but it has yet to appear in the world at large. Clearly it was intended to precede the post about the women themselves, but here we are. I am attempting to publish this now.)
Anyone who has walked through the Giardini has almost certainly seen this ruin. As much as any fragmented Greek temple or scattered Etruscan fort, this chunk of cement represents a number of stories: Political, social, artistic, all of which are, lest we forget, human.
The story of the now-invisible monument is made of people and events stretching from World War 2 till the 1960s; it concludes in 1969 with the addendum of the contorted, algae-covered bronze woman perpetually drowning in the water just beyond. The algae-covered woman is fairly easy to interpret, whether you happen to like her or not, but the mute chunk of cement just stands there like some prehistoric stele.
This post will be about the monuments, and the following post will be about who they represent, much of which has faded by now into the middle and far distance in the general memory (spoiler alert: They represent the Italian women who fought in the Resistance during World War 2).
The back of the pedestal is inscribed “Nel X anno dalla Liberazione.” On the tenth anniversary of the Liberation.
Venice was occupied by the German army from September 8, 1943 till April 28, 1945; there were 17 Nazi command posts in the city. And, as in the rest of Italy, resistance movements flourished. There are plaques on a good many Venetian streets to the memory of male partisans who were caught and executed, victims of the “German lead” (bullets). But the dramatic and crucial participation of the women of the Veneto region is officially recognized only in the Giardini.
A typical plaque honoring a male partisan is found on the wall by the bridge connecting Campo Manin and the Calle de la Mandola.“That night of November 18 1944 Luigi Giacopino falling under the German lead hastened the hour of the liberation of Italy from the tyrants from within and without. By subscription the people the Comune.” The dates and names change but the wording is always the same and notes the double mission of the partisans to fight, not only against the occupying German forces, but also the Fascist dictatorship.
Let me say at the outset that I do not represent myself as an expert on Italian social and political evolution of any epoch; it is fiendishly complex, and what we don’t know will always be more than what we do. Added to this is the inevitable (I guess it’s inevitable) gloss of romance that is so easy to spread across the dauntless souls, men and women, who undertook terrifying risks and, when things went wrong, faced hideous torture and death.
The women who aided the Resistance in myriad ways worked — obviously — as secretly as possible, so it was a great thing when it was decided to commemorate their toil, resourcefulness, determination, and overall courage and grit. The result was a statue in painted majolica by sculptor Leoncillo Leonardi. This work was installed atop a cement pedestal designed by Carlo Scarpa, the renowned Venetian architect.
The statue in 1960, photographed by Giovanni Melagrani Its vivid colors (not shown here) didn’t do much to make it easier to comprehend. (blog Partigiani ANPI).
This statue had a fairly short life and, not unlike some of the women it celebrated, it met a violent end. On the night of July 27, 1961, a neo-fascist group set off a bomb that blew it to bits. The pedestal survived, though I don’t know if that was merely by chance.
The story begins in 1954, when the Institute for the History of the Resistance of the Three Venices (or Triveneto, the regions of Venezia Euganea, Venezia Giulia and Venezia Tridentina) decided to dedicate a memorial to all the women of the three regions who had participated in the Resistance, some of whom had also posthumously been awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor for their actions and, too often, ultimate sacrifice.
The plan was to unveil the monument in 1955 to mark the tenth anniversary of the end of World War 2. This was to be the first monument in Italy, and in Europe, commemorating the women partisans. (There have since been a few others.) To appreciate this decision, one should know that after the war the women were typically described as having “contributed” to the partisan struggle, and not as active participants sharing the risks and hardships as much as the men. (See the following post.)
Leoncillo Leonardi was chosen for the commission, a sculptor and former partisan known for having already created monuments to other civilian victims of the Resistance. He chose to work in ceramic, his favorite medium, and the vividly-colored result did not meet with universal enthusiasm even though the neo-Cubist style was a nice poke in the eye to the Fascist government which had forbidden it.
The original statue, shown here, is displayed at Ca’ Pesaro, the Museum of Modern Art in Venice. It is identical to the statue that was destroyed but with one small difference: the kerchief at her neck is red. Before the statue’s inauguration, some of the partisans’ associations strongly objected to this color, interpreting it as special recognition of the Resistance fighters of the Italian Communist party, so Leoncillo produced a copy which bore a brown kerchief. This accounts for the delay which finally saw the monument inaugurated in September, 1957, two years after the tenth anniversary of the Liberation.The statue is fairly chaotic from any angle, but the important point is that it represented the partisan woman as strong, determined, and armed, no less. In fact, the committee intentionally commissioned a strong work to celebrate the “heroic participation” of the women partisans. As one commentator remarked, she avoids two of the major cliches, being neither a mother nor a victim. Showing her as a warrior –a typically masculine pose — was unusually audacious.Not at all ingratiating, but that was certainly part of the message. The statue exalted, among other things, the feeling of triumph felt at the defeat of the dictatorship. Although the city commissioned a completely different statue from another artist after the explosion, it did buy the rejected red-kerchiefed statue which till then had just been sitting in the artist’s studio.Now that we know what the statue looked like, we can more or less make it out in the mosaic. I have not discovered who made it.
After the 1.5 kilos of explosives (one source says dynamite, another says TNT) pulverized the statue, the enraged Venetians staged protests against what was universally seen as neo-Fascist aggression. What pieces remained were gathered up and dumped in a pile with other trash and detritus behind the city’s “Serra,” or greenhouse, which was itself neglected over time till it reached a state of impressive deterioration. The fate of the fragments was forgotten for some 50 years, but when the Serra underwent a major restoration a few years ago, the garbage collectors carting the debris away discovered the bits of the statue. The largest and most important piece was the chest and head of the woman (the majolica layer of the face had been obliterated by the blast), an arm with a hand, and a number of other pieces, though the lower part of the statue is essentially gone forever.
The concrete pedestal had been recovered (I lack details here) in 2003 and set upright again by Roberto Benvenuti, the supervising architect. My sources say that the pieces were given to a restorer to be reassembled in some way, but there the trail goes cold.
To return to 1961: In the aftermath of the attack, a new committee was formed to commission another statue. Why didn’t they just install the original red-kerchiefed woman? There seem to be two reasons. One, apparently nobody ever liked it. Down deep, people felt it was just too different — not so much for the militant character of the woman as for its exceptional modernity (read: Cubist colored clay is just too weird). It must have been a blow to Leoncillo, not only to see his statue exploded, but not to be asked to make a new one (he died in 1968, seven years after the event).
The second reason for a new work, however, appears to have been a radical change in viewpoint toward the women partisans themselves. Even as plaques and street-names in their honor were being put up around the Veneto, many of these women were no longer seen in their triumphant aspect. Reflecting this revision, the new statue (in more-traditional bronze instead of ceramic) would represent, not the resolute combatant, but the martyred victim. This new statue was as full of feeling as the first, but it was a different feeling, focused on sacrifice and suffering.
” La Partigiana” by Augusto Murer, 1969. Something of a dramatic difference from the already dramatic monument by Leoncillo. It certainly shows the woman’s agony, but there’s not even a hint of her courage. Perhaps we’re supposed to imagine it, as the lagoon washes over the figure, sometimes nearly submerging it. As an aside, the multi-layer pedestal was also designed by Carlo Scarpa and was supposed to rise and fall with the tide. Everybody realizes that something went wrong and nothing is being done to correct it. If I were a world-famous architect I’d be plenty mad — that’s two of my pedestals gone kaflooey. I’m sure that neither he nor Murer anticipated she’d end up like this, though that’s beside the more important point of the figure itself. (Flickr, Jacqueline Poggi).One notices also that the earlier statue was dedicated to the partisans of “the Veneto,” while this version names only Venice and “the partisan.” Perhaps it is intended as a blanket recognition by Venice of all the women partisans everywhere ever.
There were undoubtedly as many political as aesthetic reasons for this change, and I cannot plumb those depths here. I merely note, as one journalist put it, that by 1969 the city “preferred to convey a different image of the woman in war. What’s striking is the willingness to substitute for a strong image, alive, of a woman who reacts and resists, a more traditional one, of a woman defeated by war and not even easily identifiable as a partisan.” In the ten years separating the two statues, the image of the dynamic woman who fought had regressed, in a way, to that of the tragic woman who was courageous but who just “helped” the men.
The following post is dedicated to the women themselves.
If you were looking for a statue of a famous Venetian, it’s unlikely you’d have thought of finding it here. Was this its original position? Because there couldn’t be a more vivid way to express “Nobody cares — we’ll just work around it.”
Sharp-eyed readers, no matter how well-read, probably wouldn’t associate “Modena” (MOH-deh-na) with a man, but rather with the city which is the fountainhead of balsamic vinegar. A slightly curious last name, for someone born in Venice, but there’s a man in Modena with the last name “Venezia.” Seems fair.
Gustavo Modena (1803 – 1861) appears by now to have been consigned to corners — of libraries, of artistic and political discussions, and even of the Giardini Pubblici in Venice. But he was front and center in Italian artistic and political life in the mid-1800s — arguably the premier Italian actor of the 19th century — and active in the secret revolutionary society known as the “carbonari” which was a driving force in the efforts to unify Italy. When he wasn’t acting, he was being followed by the police. Clearly, activist-actors aren’t a recent phenomenon and he was equally amazing in both roles (sorry).
Judging by the pedestal alone, this was quite the man. The statue is by Venetian sculptor Carlo Lorenzetti (1858 – 1945).
“Like so much else in the arts,” the Cambridge Guide to Theatre tells us, “the early 19th-century Italian theatre was dominated by the struggle for national independence and unification, all the more fuelled by the sentiments of the romantic movement which in Italy was a revolt not only against French-oriented classicism, but against foreign domination, political fragmentation, economic retardation, and intellectual obscurantism. More, perhaps, than elsewhere, romanticism too had strong nationalist and popular emphases.”
There is no way for us to experience his acting, unhappily for us, though contemporary reports state that it was powerful and highly naturalistic. His writings may have been equally eloquent, but when read today can’t possibly evoke the same responses as they did when Italy was in turmoil. However effective he may have been in his lifetime, only faint reverberations, if any, reach us today. I have no reason to doubt commentators who state that he achieved “strepitosi successi” — sensational successes — on the stage, but we can’t feel them. The statue looks earnest, nothing more.
The white stain is regrettable.
As for his fervent and unceasing labors to liberate his countrymen from their assorted overlords, I don’t presume to recount all his adventures, because I don’t presume you’d be inclined to read them. That whole historical period requires concentration.
But he isn’t completely forgotten. There are theatres named for him, as well as streets –“via Gustavo Modena”s are scattered across Italy: Rome, Milan, Padua, Florence, Bologna, Treviso, Perugia, Vigonza, and of course in Mori, his father’s home town near Trento. It’s great that he is so honored; it’s just too bad that he now seems as distant as Pharaoh Sneferka of the First Dynasty.
In Venice, though, he’ll always have that plinth.
He’s much less imposing when he’s not on his pedestal (or stage), but much more appealing. Here he looks more like your tenth-grade geometry teacher than either a famous revolutionary or dramatic actor.The inscription reads: GUSTAVO MODENA NELLE TORMENTOSE VIGILIE DELLA PATRIA / L’AUSTERA E LIBERA ANIMA / NUDRI’ DELLA FIEREZZA ANTICA / DA LUI CON INSUPERATO MAGISTERO D’ARTE / RISUSCITATA SULLE SCENE. “Gustavo Modena In the harrowing vigils of the fatherland / the austere and free spirit / nourished by the ancient boldness / with insuperable artistic mastery / revived on the stage.” If I could manage a better translation, I would, but meanwhile just remember the most important words: “boldness,” “insuperable,” “artistic mastery.” It’s an impressive effort to honor his talent in the theatrical as well as political sphere but there’s no question it sounds better in Italian.On the western side of the pedestal is the simple notation NATO A VENEZIA IL 13 FEBBRAIO 1803 MORTO A TORINO IL 20 FEBBRAIO 1861. “Born in Venice 13 February 1803 Died in Torino 20 February 1861.” He died not quite a month before the Kingdom of Italy was declared (March 17, 1861), the fruit of his lifetime of struggle. I can only hope that before expiring he was able to confirm that the nation would finally be founded.Venice wasn’t alone in commemorating him: “To Gustavo Modena Dramatic Artist and Patriot Florence 1903.”On the via Tornabuoni in Florence is another plaque: “In this house Gustavo Modena in the year 1849 directed the journal ‘La Costituente’ (The Constituent). A daily promotion of Republican unity to lift the people of Italy to the dignity of a nation.” The Brotherhood of Artisans of Italy place this in memory on November 22, 1903.”A memorial to Modena in Torino, by Leonardo Bistolfi (1900).A bust of Modena belonging to the Civic Museums of Florence.Modena on the Janiculum Hill in Rome.The Gustavo Modena theatre in Palmanova.
All these monuments in his honor — not bad for a man hardly anyone remembers anymore.
One of the most notable monuments in the Giardini — in its position, and in itself — is of Venetian aviator Pier Luigi Penzo. Like his next-door neighbor, Francesco Querini, he too was involved in Arctic exploration and met a very distressing, unexpected, undeserved, all the “un”s you want, end. Yet somehow his story lacks some crucial element that makes Querini’s so riveting. I think it’s because the real focus of attention was on someone else.
The inscription reads: ACCANTO AL MARMO DI FRANCESCO QUERINI QUI VUOLSI ONORATA E COMPIANTA L’ALA DEL VENEZIANO PIER LUIGI PENZO SORVOLATA SU L’ARTIDE CADUTO NEL RODANO NATO A VENEZIA 5 MAGGIO 1896 MORTO A VALENCE IL 29 SETTEMBRE 1928.” “Beside the marble of Francesco Querini here it is desired to be honored and lamented the wing of Venetian Pier Luigi Penzo Flown above the Arctic Fallen in the Rhone Born in Venice 5 May 1896 Died 29 September 1928.” The eagle and anchor represent his status as a Navy pilot before passing to the Air Force.Although the words don’t exactly soar, one can admire the design of the lettering. On a more modest note, it appears that the encroachment of the shrub is eventually going to cover the words completely if someone doesn’t intervene with the pruning shears.He looks entirely like someone who deserves a monument, though of course monuments tend to do that.
The barest outlines of his tale are that he participated in a massive rescue operation in the vicinity of the North Pole in 1928; on his flight home his plane struck some power lines near Valence, France and broke apart. It fell into the Rhone River, from which his remains were recovered two weeks later some 50 km (31 miles) downstream. I have found surprisingly little to add to that summary; Google searches mercilessly return articles about the Venetian soccer stadium, named — another sort of memorial — for him.
Therefore, and meaning no disrespect, you might be wondering why this person, who admittedly met a premature and unmerited demise, should have been given such an impressive monument. (In fact, two of them — the other is on the cemetery island of San Michele.)
I’m glad you wondered, because while the ill-fated expedition he was sent to rescue is lavishly described in numerous documents, not to mention a film (“The Red Tent,” 1969), Penzo himself seems not to have been the hero, but a team player in the grand sweep of several tragedies. I must describe these tragedies — some technical, some human, some political — in order to clarify why Penzo was literally put on a pedestal. Emotions of all sizes and sorts had been running extremely high.
The Gazzettino, then a weekly, published this portrait of the 32-year-old Penzo a few weeks after his death. He was posthumously awarded the silver medal of the Air Force.
In drastically condensed form, we pick up the tale of Italian efforts to reach the North Pole in the autumn of 1925, when Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen asked General Umberto Nobile of the Italian Royal Air Force to collaborate with him on a flight to the North Pole; Amundsen wanted to be the first to reach it by air. More to the point, he wanted to fly in a semi-rigid airship, and Nobile was already well-known as an important aeronautical engineer, pilot, and fervent proponent of dirigibles.
Nobile designed and piloted the airship Norge, accomplishing the first verified trip of any kind to reach the North Pole and likely the first verified flight from Europe to North America (Svalbard, Norway to Teller, Alaska) over the polar ice cap. This feat was known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth 1926 Transpolar Flight, so named for Lincoln Ellsworth who, with the Aero Club of Norway, financed the expedition. On May 12, 1926 at 1:30 AM GMT the North Pole was reached (though not actually touched). The flags of Norway, Italy, and the United States were dropped onto the ice and the airship proceeded to Alaska.
With the success of this exploit Nobile then planned another polar overflight, this time with an all-Italian crew in a dirigible named Italia. The project, however, met strong headwinds from his many enemies in the Fascist government, some of whom were also enemies of airships but huge fans of rigid aircraft. After grudgingly approving the expedition, Captain Italo Balbo, then-Secretary of State for the Air Force (later Minister of the Air Force), wished him a special bon voyage: “Let him go,” he is reported to have said, “for he cannot possibly come back to bother us anymore.”
The expedition went splendidly for a while. On May 23, 1928, after a 69-hour flight to the Siberian group of Arctic islands, the Italia began its flight to the North Pole with Nobile as both pilot and expedition leader. On May 24, the airship reached the Pole and began its homeward trip to Svalbard when it ran into a storm.
Rapidly losing altitude in the struggle against real headwinds, the next day the Italia crashed onto the pack ice fewer than 30 kilometers (18 miles) north of Nordaustlandet (astern part of Svalbard).
Of the 16 men in the crew, ten were thrown onto the ice as the gondola was smashed; without the weight of the gondola, the buoyant superstructure began to float away with six crewmen still inside it who, as they drifted skyward, threw all the supplies they could manage out onto the ice, which saved the lives of their severely injured comrades. The six were never seen again.
The disaster’s horror was intensified, if such a thing were possible, by the desperation of the month-long search for the survivors.
The men on the ice sent calls for help via a radio transceiver salvaged from the shattered gondola, but 30 days passed with no response. While a variety of the usual Arctic horrors were befalling them, an international rescue operation was seeking them — Soviet Russia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Italy, not to mention privately owned ships which had been chartered by polar scientists and explorers. Even Roald Amundsen put aside his bad feelings toward Nobile and boarded a French seaplane to aid in the rescue efforts. The plane disappeared between Tromsø and Svalbard, and though a pontoon from the craft was later found, the bodies of Amundsen and all aboard were not.
Enter Major Pier Luigi Penzo, joining the search on June 23, 1928 in his Marina II, an SM55-Dornier Wal hydroplane. Born in Malamocco, he had enrolled in the Italian Royal Navy at the age of 20, and earned his hydroplane pilot’s license at the seaplane base at Sant’ Andrea, just across from the Lido. He distinguished himself in combat on the Piave front in World War 1, and had become one of the most requested aerial rescue pilots then active. He was also well-known to Italo Balbo — I suppose you could say he was a friend — with whom he had flown on several occasions.
The “idroscalo,” or seaplane base, at Sant’ Andrea was where Penzo earned his hydroplane pilot’s license. There was a flourishing waterborne airmail route between Torino and Trieste in the Twenties, mostly following the rivers (Ticino, Po) till reaching Venice.
In the end, the survivors’ signals were picked up by a Russian ham radio operator who alerted the search teams, and it wasn’t even Penzo who spotted them for the first time, but fellow pilot Umberto Maddalena. And the first rescue plane to land was a Swedish Air Force Fokker ski plane piloted by Lieutenant Einar Lundborg.
Nobile had prepared a detailed evacuation plan, with the most seriously wounded man (the heavily built mechanic Natale Cecioni) at the top of the list and himself as number 4. But Lundborg refused to take anyone but Nobile, who also had been injured. Lundborg argued that the plane could only take one passenger, and Cecioni was so heavy the pilot was unsure he could take off. So Nobile was airlifted to safety, a captain who, it can’t be denied, had clearly not chosen to go down with his ship (so to speak). When Nobile boarded the Italian ship that served as expedition headquarters, he was arrested.
Worse still, when Lundborg returned alone to pick up the next survivor his plane crashed on landing, and he was left on the ice with the other five.
Meanwhile, Penzo and his crew (as well as another hydroplane) undertook a series of flights over the icepack dropping supplies and instruments to the marooned men. I can’t give any details on whether he took any survivors back to base.
After 48 days on the ice, the last five men of his crew were picked up by the Soviet icebreaker Krasin.
Time to leave? Nobile insisted that he wanted to stay to continue the search for the six men who were swept away in the airship when it disintegrated, but was ordered back to Rome with the others. He was to discover that the Arctic catastrophe wasn’t over, because it had given his enemies their chance to eliminate him.
When he and his men arrived in Rome on July 31, they were greeted by 200,000 cheering Italians. The popular exultation at the happy ending of the agonizing drama momentarily baffled Balbo and his allies, who had been seeding the foreign and domestic press with accusations against Nobile, claiming that agreeing to be evacuated first was an obvious sign of cowardice. (Pause to wonder why, in fact, Lundborg had insisted on taking him off before everybody else.) The official inquiry gave them the chance to place the blame for the disaster entirely on his shoulders. He was accused of abandoning his men, and Balbo went so far as to call for his execution by firing squad for treason and cowardice. Instead, Nobile resigned his commission and went to the United States, returning only in 1943 when Balbo was dead.
Here is a fuller, though still concise, account of the Italia disaster.
Italians of Lino’s vintage were raised with the conviction that Umberto Nobile was a craven poltroon, but this stamp commemorating the 90th anniversary of the expedition shows the “Italia” proudly aloft.
So, as I mentioned, there were tragedies: The technical tragedy was the crash of the “Italia”; the human tragedy was the loss of life; the political tragedy, as I see it, was the destruction of Nobile’s reputation. I don’t say he was right to be evacuated first, but the fact that the attacks on him were politically motivated is revolting.
In the months between the departure of the survivors in July and his own departure in September, Penzo remained at King’s Bay to continue the search for Amundsen, as well as for the six men lost in the envelope that floated away. In these flights he didn’t use his usual hydroplane, but a Macchi 18 biplane hydro-bomber (I throw that in for any aviation fans who might be reading). Unsuccessful in both cases, he was finally ordered back to Italy.
On September 27 (Thursday) he sent a telegram to his family that he was on his way home, and his brothers left Venice for Pisa, where his plane was expected to land on Friday. But it did not.
On Sunday morning a functionary of City Hall delivered the bad news to his wife. Two of his crew had survived the crash and been saved by fishermen, but Penzo and another two crewmen drowned. His remains were interred on the cemetery island of San Michele, under a honking big monument.
The memorial to Penzo is located in the section dedicated to the military. The eagles appear to want to be artichokes.The inscription in Latin identifies Petrus Alojsius Penzo April 6 1896 September 29 1928. Following his date of death is inscribed “E.F. VI,” for the sixth year of the Era Fascista (Fascist Era). The oak leaves above his head typically symbolize power, endurance and strength (also humble beginnings, which would certainly be apt for Malamocco); they’re often seen on military tombs.This interesting device is easy enough to decipher: The propellers and compass rose for aviation, the bear symbolizes the Arctic, and the corpse floating on the water would represent the victim.The other side of the monument isn’t much less impressive.“ASSUMENT PENNAS UT AQUILAE VOLABUNT ET NON DEFICIENT.” “They shall take wings as eagles, they shall run and not be faint.” Here the famous phrase from the book of Isaiah 40:31 is attributed simply to the “prophets.”“VIVENT MORTUI TUI + INTERFECTI TUI RESURGENT.” ‘Thy dead men shall live; thy slain men shall be raised.” (The Book of Wisdom).
But wasn’t enough; another memorial, in a more public place, was seen as desirable, and it was unveiled at an inauguration ceremony on June 1, 1932 by — of course! — Italo Balbo, then Minister of the Air Force. He had organized an international aviation conference in Rome, and added Venice to the program.
It was obviously correct for him, in his official capacity, to honor a fallen comrade, but he must have enjoyed the chance to castigate Nobile once again by glorifying a man who had lost his life in the effort, more or less, to save him. At least that’s how I interpret this extravagant conclusion to Penzo’s life.
The monument was designed by Venetian sculptor Francesco Scarpabolla (1902-1999). “Oh sure,” said Lino when I shared this information. “I knew him, he lived just down the street from me near San Vio.” We were all expecting that by now, naturally.
But the best monument to Penzo, to my way of thinking, isn’t either one of the statues, nor even the soccer stadium (sorry). It’s the elementary school at Malamocco, which bears his name. Latin quotations and oak leaves are all very well, but the school is dedicated to a local boy, and it’s there that his name will truly be kept alive.
I will trek down to Malamocco one of these days and make some photographs of the school. Meanwhile, here is map evidence that it exists.
