[SEARCHING FOR THE TRUTH]

The closet of the shame"

In Palazzo Cesi, sixteenth-century building in the street of Acquasparta in Rome, center of the General Military Proxy, the files, related to hundreds of crimes carried out by the nazi-fascistis in 1943 - 1945 against civilians, flowed after the Liberation. That files contained the names of the victims, of the offenders and of the places where the slaughter took place; there was an inquiry for every files and a trial for every inquiry. The Districts of the Military Proxy, institutional addressees of those documents, would have to work on them .
Instead, everything was buried in that building. There weren’t any inquiries neither trials. All remained into the silence: indicting elements, testimonies, names.
On May of 1994, a closet was found by chance in Palazzo Cesi; it was protected by a gate closed by key and it had its shutters turned toward the wall. It was "the closet of the shame"; it contained a big register, with 2273 item, on which was written all that it is containing or had contained : 695 files, and 415 of them reporting the names of the offenders.
The files number 1 was about the slaughters of the Ardeatine; it reported the names of Herber Kappler, Erich Priebke and the other offenders that, thanks to that hiding, availed of 50 years of freedom. It occurred also to the offenders of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, of Marzabotto, of Fivizzano, etc.
The reason of State imposed the hiding of that files. The motivation was the “cold war”. The world was separated in two parts and the new Germany had to enter into the Nato, as bulwark against the Soviet advance. It was preferred to keep silent about the crimes committed by the Nazism, and it was opened a new page.
However, still today, the questions which remained open are too much; they are like deep hurt for the whole nation: who gave the order of the hiding? Who took that dramatic responsibility? Who will ask forgiveness, in the name of the State, about this huge injustice?