Postcard featuring Italian fascist martyrs

Postcard featuring Italian fascist martyrs

The front of the card features two unarmed Italian soldiers who are about to be executed by a group of armed partisans in Soviet equipment. One of the partisans is Costantino Marini. He was a high school teacher, born in 1911 in Darzo di Storo, in the Giudicarie region, and came from a poor farming family. Commissioned as a Reserve Lieutenant, Costantino Marini left for Greece to accompany the Bolzano Battalion , 11th Alpine Regiment. During one of his many missions, on December 2, 1941, he was on the return journey with a squad of eight Alpine soldiers: near Varos, not far from Podgorica, the group of Italian soldiers was surrounded and overwhelmed by a formation of Slavic partisans, who were taken prisoner and searched. And it was at this point that a bread ration card was found in Lieutenant Costantino Marini's wallet, a card distributed to millions of Italians, but which turned out to be indispensable for every elementary school teacher who wished to continue teaching. His protests over that small piece of paper were to no avail: when the Slavs later ordered him to tear it up to save his life, as an officer, he categorically refused. For over two weeks, Costantino Marini was held, interrogated, and subjected to hardship: he could only be saved if he renounced possession of that card.
The other Alpini, later released, testified: on December 18th, after yet another refusal, Lieutenant Marini was led before the firing squad and shot. While he became a Hero of Mussolini's war for Fascism, so much so that the headquarters of the Fascist Party in Trento was named after him, after the conflict he was awarded the Silver Medal of Military Valor in his memory: "Returning from a recovery mission, attacked by rebels, in much superior forces, with only eight men, he defended himself fiercely and held his ground for more than an hour. Captured, during fifteen days of captivity, he faced hard labor, torture and humiliation, with dignified and austere demeanor, arousing the admiration of the other prisoners, despite knowing that this represented a certain death sentence. For his proud and inflexible conduct as a soldier, he was barbarously shot. Nova Varos, Montenegro, 18 December 1941. "

The fascist oath on the upper right corner of the card says "In the name of God and of Italy, I swear to carry out the orders of the Duce and to serve, with all my strength and, if necessary, with my blood, the cause of the Fascist Revolution."

Information on Costantino Marini obtained from National Association of Combatants and Veterans (ANCR)

October 25 1942