L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 1, 2017 www.italoamericano.org 24 L'Italo-Americano LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE D ear Readers, the Festa Della Repubblica is cele- brated on June 2nd. Italy did not exist in unified form until 1861 and Rome, which remained under the Papacy for another decade, was incorporated into Italy in 1870. It was then that the various principalities, city-states and other rural areas were united into one political entity ruled by the House of Savoy, a constitutional monarchy for over half a century. On October 1922, with the famous March on Rome, Mussolini took power and remained the de facto ruler of Italy for two decades, although the king was allowed to remain as a ceremonial figurehead. Mussolini's fascist government ruled until July 1943. All aspects of life were changed; opponents were jailed or exiled, racist laws against Jews were passed and the alliance with Hitler was formed. This led to Italy's participation in WWII as an ally of the German Nazi government in 1940. In July 1943, the king of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele III, saw it as his duty to save the Monarchy and end Mussolini's two-decade rule. On July 25, 1943, the king received Mussolini for what Mussolini thought were the usual weekly meetings in Rome. Mussolini was instead arrested and a new government was formed. The new government declared war against Germany, which responded by invading Italy and freeing Mussolini, who formed the Italian Socialist Republic in the city of Salò in northern Italy. The allies eventual- ly arrived in Italy and liberated northern Italy and the rest of the country from German occupation in April 1945. On May 9, 1946, King Umberto became Italy's last king after the abdication of his father, Vittorio Emanuele III, whose abil- ity to rule had been compromised by his acquiescence to Mussolini's dictatorship and by the fact that the king and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, Prime Minister of Italy, fled in September 1943 (after signing a secret uncondi- tional surrender armistice agree- ment with Dwight Eisenhower, Allied Commander), leaving thousands of soldiers and civilians in uninformed disarray. Berlin fell to the Allies in April 1945, Mussolini was executed by the partisans in Italy on April 28, 2915 and in Berlin, April 30, 1945, Adolph Hitler committed suicide. In the Pacific, WWII con- tinued until the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and then Nagasaki on August 9. Japan surrendered to the Allies on August 14, 1945 and General Macarthur formally accepted the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. *** On June 2, 1946, following twenty years of fascism, five years of grueling war, and confusing political times, the Italian people were asked to vote between a Republican government and the Monarchy. My father Vincenzo and his "paesani" spent many of their days off writing letters for many months prior to the election in Italy. Italian newspaper editors in the United States, like Generoso Pope Sr. in New York urged thou- sands of "Il Progresso" readers to write to relatives in Italy and encourage them to vote in "la democrazia." June 2, 1946 was a beautiful Sunday in most of Italy. Bars and cafés were ordered closed during the voting to avoid drunken riots and scenes. Millions of Italians lined up at polls to cast the historic vote. Nearly half of all voters were women. The king and queen, Umberto and Maria Jose, also voted, although they had slight problems at the polls when they showed up to vote without bring- ing identification. *** "Referendum on the Institutional Format of the Country" headed the ballot with two pictures of the Italian peninsu- la on which the symbols of the monarchy or the republic were superimposed, and a box next to each picture for the voter to mark. On June 5, the final tally showed 54.3% of the voters chose a Republic, leading to the end of the Monarchy and peaceful exile for Umberto and the royal family. The many events leading to June 2, and the vote itself, com- bined to make it one of Italy's most important historical dates and later was declared a national holiday. *** King Vittorio Emanuele III of Savoy and Queen Elena of Montenegro had 5 children: princesses Yolanda Margherita (1901); Mafalda Maria (1902); Giovanna Elisabetta (1907); Maria Francesca (1914); and the only boy, Prince Umberto II (1904), was the last king of Italy for only 38 days after his father went into exile in Egypt. Princess Yolanda Margherita married Count Giorgio Calvi di Bergolo, a cavalry officer. When her father left for exile in Egypt, she moved with her husband and 5 children to Alexandria, Egypt, where she remainder until her father's death in 1947. Princess Mafalda married German prince, Friedrich Kassel. They had 4 children. At the same time as Italy's surrender to the Allies, Mafalda flew to Sofia, Rumania to assist her sister Giovanna because her husband Boris III had become seriously ill. Unfortunately, when she attempt- ed to return to Rome, she was arrested by the Germans and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp where she died of an infec- tion due to neglect. Princess Giovanna, through her wedding to Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, became queen of Bulgaria. Boris and Giovanna had 2 children: Maria Luisa (1933) and a son, heir to the throne, Simeone (1937). Princess Mari Francesca, was married in 1939 to Prince Luigi Carlo of Bourbon-Parma. They had 4 children. *** Flag Day in the U.S. is June 14. The colors are important for they represent: Red is for valor, Zeal and fervency; White is for hope, purity and cleanliness of life and rectitude of conduct; Blue, the color of heaven, is for reverence to god, loyalty, sincerity, justice and truth. *** Italy's Flag (called the Tricolore) is red, white and green. Those colors represent the three cardinal virtues: hope (green), faith (white) and charity (red), as Dante explained in The Divine Comedy. When Italy was finally united under the Royal House of Savoy in 1860, the King's coat of arms was added to the white portion of the flag, but removed in 1946 after Italy became a Republic.

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