The Memory Wall, Maria Tolomelli
On 21, april 1945 the day of Bologna’s liberation Maria was so happy that she felt she wasn’t walking on the ground. In those war’s days Maria, who was only twelve years old, with two long black plaits of hair, as a child, has brought inside the city many bag full of weapons. Partisans put woods on the wepons, put on vegetables, so the women could bring them inside the city below fascist guard’s eyes. Policemen had never stopped her even if they looked at her: but she was only a child. Maria run toward the centre of the city, there were more and more people. In the square she saw a lot of soldiers American soldiers were giants, wearing big boots. Maria sat on the fountain’s stairs to give a rest, because her hearttrob, suddenly she saw two big shoes coming up to her. She looked up, there was a big New Zealander soldier, who smiled at her and gave her one bread and one chocolat. She almost lose her consciousness. The bread was sliced bread, white, light, such a delight…! From the steps of the fountain’s stair she could see a little woman wearing in black who came out of the big crowd that filled the square and than, at a slow pace, went toward the town hall’s wall. When the woman was near the wall she drew out a hammer, a nail and in front of all the people, slowly, she drove the nail in the wall and put on the nail a picture: there was her son, her husband, who knows? That was the first one: in the evening the wall was covered by pictures. That’s how the memorial to the war dead of Bologna was born.
