“Dear Marcella when you read this, which will be my last contact with you, I will be in the world where at least I will find some peace, if the good God who can do all things permits”. Thus begins the moving letter that the Montesacro partisan Orlando Orlandi Posti, called Lallo by his friends, wrote to his beloved fiancée Marcella in March 1944, before being shot dead in the Fosse Ardeatine massacre (24 March 1944).
Orlando Orlandi Posti
On 3 February 1944, when Orlando learned that the Germans were carrying out a raid in the neighbourhood, he rushed to warn his anti-fascist comrades, enabling many of them to get to safety and escape arrest. He was not able to avoid it, because he went to his mother, Matilde Servoli, so as not to worry her. Locked up in Via Tasso, Orlando Orlandi Posti came out only to be shot at the Fosse Ardeatine.
However, before dying, he wrote some poignant words, full of love, to his fiancée: “So, my Marcellina, when you read this letter, I absolutely do not want your dear little face to be streaked with tears, just please add a little prayer for my soul to your evening prayers”. And again: “Know Marcella that I loved you, but very much and for a long time I only knew how to silence my heart because I was not worthy”.
The photo shown here belongs to the Fosse Ardeatine Archive and is taken from the Typimedia Editore volume ‘Come Eravamo Montesacro’. In the same series were published volumes dedicated to the districts: Trieste-Salario, Nomentano, Monteverde and San Lorenzo.
In the series “Come Eravamo”, Typimedia Editore also published volumes dedicated to the districts: Trieste-Salario, Nomentano, Monteverde and San Lorenzo
WATCH: How to buy the volume ‘Come Eravamo Montesacro
WATCH: All the volumes of the series ‘Come Eravamo
