Towards April 25. The contribution of former students of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies to the War of Liberation

There are places that, in the collective imagination, have become symbols of the War of Liberation and the Resistance against Nazi-Fascism. Mountain villages such as Marzabotto and Sant'Anna di Stazzema, where atrocious massacres of civilians took place; cities that were the scene of crucial battles, such as Bologna, Florence, and Genoa; islands transformed into prisons, such as Ventotene and the Tremiti Islands, where anti-fascists began to imagine and plan a different future.
In Pisa, one of the symbolic places of the Resistance, it sounds like a mockery of the fascist regime, both for the name it was given and for what it was supposed to represent in the plans of high-ranking fascist officials. This was the 'Mussolini' college, established in 1931 and reserved for law students destined to specialize in the field cultivated at the School of Advanced Studies in Corporate Studies. Together with the National Medical College, founded a year later in 1932, the 'Mussolini' was designated by fascism as the ideal place to build Italy's new ruling class.
However, the plan got out of hand and the two colleges in Pisa—which merged in 1967 to form the Scuola Superiore di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento, now known as the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna—became a laboratory of ideas and personal experiences that would have a decisive influence on the War of Liberation and the transition to a republican and democratic post-war Italy.

Justice is freedom: the law... of the partisan

Unraveling the red thread of memory means recovering more or less forgotten stories, bringing back to light individual and collective choices that made it possible to redeem the dark years of the regime. These are vivid experiences, capable for many years of moving in the shadows and in hiding, only to find their consecration during the Resistance. 
 

In the two colleges in Pisa, very different stories and experiences intertwine but, when taken together, provide a complete picture of a generation of young men and women who had to choose which side to be on. 
 

Carlo Smuraglia arrived in Pisa from Ancona in 1941, after the war had already begun. His legal studies lasted only one year. After September 8, 1943, Smuraglia found himself lost and confused. He attended several meetings and decided not to join the Republic of Salò, choosing instead to follow 'the path of the disbanded'. At the end of November, he joined one of the first partisan brigades formed in the Marche region and a few months later enlisted as a volunteer in the 'Cremona' combat group of the renewed Italian army. He did not hold any command or particularly important roles during the War of Liberation but, immediately after the war, he returned to Pisa to finish his studies and begin his career as a lawyer. In 2011, he became national president of the ANPI.

Before the war, Smuraglia, by his own admission, had vague political ideas. It was his experience at the college in Pisa that gave him the impetus to arrive at a new awareness. Raimondo Ricci's path was different: the son of a magistrate, Ricci arrived at the Mussolini college in 1939 and immediately came into contact with the clandestine communist organization.

Italy's entry into the war forced Ricci to interrupt his studies. When he was called up for military service, he attended the Naval Academy in Livorno and became a reserve officer in the Navy. The turning point came with the armistice: Ricci did not respond to the proclamations of the Republic of Salò and went into hiding, helping to form the first nucleus of a partisan brigade on the heights of Mount Faudo, above Imperia. In December 1943, on his return from a mission to Genoa to meet representatives of the National Liberation Committee, he was arrested by the political investigation office of the Republican National Guard. Ricci was first imprisoned in Imperia and then in Savona, where he was subjected to interrogation and torture. In early 1944, he was taken over by the SS and transferred to the fourth section of the Marassi prison in Genoa, reserved for political prisoners. Here he witnessed the shooting of two cellmates and then, in May 1944, he ended up in the Fossoli camp, a collection center for Jews and political prisoners destined for deportation to Nazi concentration camps.
 

Ricci reached the Mauthausen concentration camp at the end of June 1944 and remained there until the camp was liberated on May 5, 1945.

Like Carlo Smuraglia, Raimondo Ricci also served as national president of the ANPI from 2009 to 2011.

Lionello Riso Levi played a fundamental role as a partisan fighter. Also a law student, he arrived in Pisa in 1932 when dissent against the regime had been virtually eliminated. Yet Levi worked behind the scenes for years and, after the armistice, was one of the leaders of the partisan movement in Val Camonica. He chose 'Sandro' as his nom de guerre and distinguished himself in a number of guerrilla actions that left their mark on the history of the Brescia Resistance, such as the assault on the GNR garrison in Bienno: Levi was one of seven partisans disguised as Germans who captured 21 fascist militiamen and seized weapons and ammunition. In July 1944, he became deputy commander and political commissar of the Fiamme Verdi 'Tito Speri' Division then, in February 1945, he was parachuted into the Passo del Mortirolo area where, leading 220 men, he fought two victorious battles against the Nazi-Fascists, earning himself the Silver Medal for Military Valor.

The partisan doctors
 

If the college for legal studies was a breeding ground for future anti-fascists, the National Medical College was no less important. Among the young people who chose 'the mountain path', doctors played a fundamental role: not only as combatants, but also as 'first aiders' for their comrades wounded in battle. Giovanni Lenci was one of them: born in Pisa in 1921, he entered the National Medical College at the age of twenty. His contribution to the Resistance was concentrated in Emilia Romagna, where he joined the medical service of Libero Golinelli's battalion of the 36th Bianconcini Garibaldi Brigade, incorporated into the 8th Army. It was here that he took part in the final clashes with the Germans and the liberation of Imola on April 14, 1945.

Another medical student, Eduino Fellin, is known to have belonged to the 'Casarosa' brigade, the most important partisan formation operating in the Pisan mountains between June and September 1944. We conclude with Luigi Marrone, born in L'Aquila in 1914, enrolled at the National Medical College of Pisa from the academic year 1939/1940. After September 8, Marrone returned to Abruzzo and joined the Duchessa partisan brigade operating in the Lucoli area, in the Gran Sasso group.

The portrait of an era
 

The anti-fascist tradition of a city like Pisa is closely linked to the history of its university. The Mussolini College and the National Medical College are two examples of this. The power of free ideas prevailed over dictatorship, and it was precisely in the places chosen by the regime to train the new fascist ruling class that the first seeds of what would become the Italian Resistance were sown.