Claretta Petacci, Mussolini, Carla Pertini: the « yellow » of the nurse’s throbbing in Piazzale Loreto

On the occasion of the 80th of the Liberation, we republish an article from 2023 in which it was reconstructed, with unpublished testimonies, the day of April 29, 1945 in Piazzale Loreto, when FUrono exposed to the crowd The bodies of Mussolini and Claretta Petacci

A safety pin Having put on good to fix the edges of a skirt and cover the nudity of the body of a lifeless woman: a small gesture of pity in the midst of a wild exposure of death. In Milan it is ten in the morning of Sunday 29 April 1945. The body hanging on the trellis of a petrol pump in Piazzale Loreto is that of Claretta Petacci33 years old, the lover of Benito Mussolini. Their bodies are hanging for the feet Together with those of other hierarchs in what Ferruccio Parri, then vice-commander of the CLN Alta Italia, defined a « Mexican butcher ».

Petacci wears the clothes with which he was killed the day before: A black suit and one white silk blouse Which now has a large red spot of blood represented in the center of the chest. The skirt, for gravity, slipped down her thighs and revealed that she it no longer has underwear. Nudity is only one of the obscenities suffered by those bodies. But someone wants to save the further humiliation to the only woman of the scene. By remedying a nurse’s pin, and covering it, in fact.
Someone who?

Over the years, a small historical yellow has been built on the detail of the nurse from the nurse: a testimony tells another version of the facts compared to the vulgate and introduces Two new protagonists In the event that marked the end of fascism: Carla Voltolinathen partisan fighter of the Matteotti brigade and future wife of Sandro Pertiniand a partisan of the Garibaldi brigade, Guglielmo Pacinione of those who participated in the liberation of Milan and who, in photos of the time, is part of the group of men perched on the trellis of the square, above the hanging bodies. Pacini disappeared in 2009 at the island of Elba, where he lived, and his testimony has always been considered reliable by the National Association of partisans of Italy (Anpi). A year before his death we met him to hear the story of that day from his voice. He would have been a face, he remembers, in the middle of the confusion of the square, to indicate Petacci’s body and scream: « Shame, pull it down, cover it, find a pin! ».

At that order Pacini decided to move, instinctively: « I took two flaps of the Petacci skirt and kept them stopped while Carla united them with the pin ». And every time the old partisan told him, he mimic the gesture with his hands, as happens when he relives a memory well imprinted in the mind. It would therefore have been the same face to ask and then to put the pin.

In the recurring historical reconstructions, on which a lot was written and a lot has been romanticated, to notice the nudity would have been a partisan relay, the battle name « Carla La Bionda » who, together with the partisan priest Don Giuseppe Pollarolohe would have decided to pull the body of Petacci down from the trellis and cover him. Behind Carla would hide Piera Baraleactually present in Piazzale Loreto, while Don Pollarolo was a priest following the partisan brigades who came from Val d’Ossola and also his presence in Milan in those days is confirmed.

Perhaps the coincidence of the name, Carla, has meant that the responsibility of the gesture to the wrong person was attributed? Not Piera Barale, therefore but Carla Voltolina, also a young partisan.
Torinese, 24 years old, Voltina has chosen to enter the resistance, in the Matteotti formations, challenging the opposition of the parents. The leaders sent it to Milan still occupied by the fascists, following Sandro Pertinione of the chiefs of CLN Alta Italia, almost 50 years old, who met fascist prisons. The two would get married a year later.
Pacini, on the other hand, is in Piazzale Loreto because it is part of the partisan team that has to guard the bodies of Mussolini, Petacci and the other 17 executed, who arrived on a truck from Lake Como to Milan.

« That Sunday morning my companions and I was in the Ettore Muti barracks in via Roello, waiting to receive provisions » thus begins the story of Pacini of that day that had been fixed in the mind. «At a certain point a team of companions arrives, tired and hungry: they tell us they have transported The bodies of the Duce and the hierarchs In Piazzale Loreto, 15 partisans had been slaughtered in the same place. Then Pertini came to us and ordered us to go to guard the bodies. When we arrived they were still on the ground, but shortly afterwards it was decided to hang them on the trellis ».

In the square there is, in the meantime, gathered Una huge crowd that is raging on corpses: Whoever kicks, who spits. Someone even shoots him. Hanging them served to make them visible from afar and move them away from the fury of the people. «We went up to the trellis, but I felt uncomfortable. A little for the fear of fascist snipers, A little for what was going on. For enemies it takes respect, even from deaths. Even if they, the fascists, had not had for us. But that was A crazy crowd. I will never forget a woman dressed in black: she approached Mussolini’s body when she was still on the ground and from under her skirt she pulled out a revolver. He managed to shoot three shots before one of ours stopped it. « For the three children you killed me at war » », Pacini still recalls.
Once the bodies are hung, however, the screams do not subside. There are fingers indicating The stripped body of Petaccimouths that scream « whore ».
It is at that moment that, according to what the partisan Elbano tells, he intervenes face.

Pacini has never heard of Don Pollarolo: « I didn’t know him and I don’t remember priests there ». Most likely, Don Giuseppe, a fighter priest, also in this circumstance does not wear the talare dress and confuses himself among the partisan athics.
How did things really go? Perhaps, Pacini’s testimony does not contradict the other, but helps to complete a picture so far partial. Revealing that there has been behind the gesture of the brooch a choral company. As Edgarda Ferri, author of « The dawn we were waiting for », also explained, a book that reconstructs the last days of the fascist Milan: « I collected the testimony of the daughter of Piera Barale, who says that her mother provided the pin, but but I know for sure that Voltina was also in Milan in those days. He was at the Hotel Touring with Pertini. So it is plausible that it was in Piazzale Loreto and that it was her, perhaps together with Don Pollarolo, who asked loudly for a pin for Petacci and to act firsthand: he is in line with his character that he was generous and passionate ».

Furthermore, Ferri explains, « it must not have been an easy business remedying a nurse: it was one of those objects that are difficult to find during a war ». In short, it is likely that a kind of word of mouth has taken place among those present – «A pin! Someone find a pin!  » -, and that this blessed pin passed by hand in hand. From those of Barale to those of Don Pollarolo, finally arriving among those of Voltolina and Pacini.

After Piazzale Loreto, Pacini remains in Milan for a few more days. Then, like many others who arrived from afar, he asks the command to return home, to San Piero, to the island of Elba. But that month in the city he remains and will remain imprinted in his memory throughout his life. So much so that, when he saw himself again in the photographs of the time, on top of the trellis, he shake his head: «Mussolini should have gone on trial in front of the whole world. But there was too much hatred, too much badness … ».

When, at the end of the 90s, VoltoLina, formerly Vedova di Pertini, went to the island of Elba and was received by the mayor of Marina di Campo, Guglielmo Pacini, with the socialist coat of arms pinned on the implication of the jacket, approached and got recognized: « They are one of the partisans of Piazzale Loreto, the one who pointed the pin ». She replied: « And I was the one who helped you to do it. »

Voltina died in 2005 without leaving a testimony of this, last, act of pity. It was not a type to boast of his gestures. Feminist, Journalist engaged in the socialimmediately after the election of her husband to President of the Republic, he said: « I have no intention of following him at the Baby Quirinale like a Madonna ». A lifestyle that always remained faithful, continuing to live in in the 35 square meter house in Fontana di Trevi and considering the rooms of the Quirinale only « Sandro’s office » (Here the interview with Umberto Vololina, Carla’s younger brother and his most personal memories on the Pertini spouses).

In 1983, Pertini, about Petacci and his end, said: « His only fault is that he loved a man. » Certainly he could have saved himself. According to the reconstructions considered official the commander « Valerio », the battle name of the partisan who, materially, performed the death sentence of the Duce, before pointing the machine gun he would have told her: « Remove if you don’t want to die with him ». She did not: she chose to stay next to Mussolini of which she had been the secret partner for 13 years and to share its fate.

It is not even completely true that loving the Duce was his only fault: one of the last biographies on the figure of Petacci « Claretta l’Hitleriana, history of the woman who did not died for the love of Mussolini » of Mirella Serridismantles the legend of the innocent martyr And he tells of a cynical woman, who was able to take advantage of her position of power, turned, asked for money and favors, even he did business with the assets confiscated from the Jews and kept confidential relationships with the leaders of the Reich in Berlin.
None of these nefarines, however, gives justification to that ending: the horror of Piazzale Loreto and the massacre of his body. A massacre to which, a nurse and the pity of someone, tried to put a piece.

After the publication of this article, we had the pleasure of meeting Umberto Vololina, the younger brother of Carla and brother -in -law of Sandro Pertini, who provided further details on his sister’s life in the spring of ’45 in Milan, during the last weeks of the Nazi employment. Umberto’s testimony, who at the time was a child (he was 19 years older than Carla) offered us the confirmation that the gesture of the brooch was really in Carla’s style and character as well as the fact of not wanting to tell him in the years to come: «My sister never told the stories related to resistance, for her it was a period of pain and fear. Source of traumatic memories. Do you think she had been arrested by the Germans and sentenced to death, in Visso, in the Marche and we family we learned of years and years later. He was saved because a German soldier, mercilessly for his young age, pushed her out of the truck that was leading her, with other anti -fascists, to shooting in a field. But she revealed this story many years later, while she was in the hospital, under the influence of the sedatives, after surgery «