Federico Molinario He was nine years old when his grandfather died in early May 1967. One day he began to see photos in which he appeared in the arms of the ninthEugenio. I found many in which he appeared dressed as a soccer player, with shirts that for any Piedmont child were sacred territory, the one with the Juventus and that of Torino. Among those memories also appeared images of the brother of the grandfather, the uncle Vittorio. He began asking his grandmother questions. She was not aware that she entered a world that became obsessive. “I have tried to keep alive the memory of Vittorio y Francesco, its ideals, its human and sports history. And we have achieved that in Turn two plaques can be seen in the place where my uncles were arrested, “he explains to MARCA.
On the dark Turin night of March 13, 1944, that arrest occurred. The Staccione brothers were waiting for them. Covered by darkness, agents of the WORK (Organization for the Supervision and Repression of Anti-Fascism) les dieron el alto. No it was the primera vez, but iba a ser the definitive one.
The Staccione were well known in Turin, both for the family’s ties to Torino and for their opposition to Mussolini and their black shirts. The accusation did not surprise them: opposition to the regime and collaboration with the partisans. Both were true and irrefutable.
They were taken to the carabinieri barracks, but they barely spent a few minutes there. A command overruled the astonished officers and sent the brothers, whom he had recognized, home to collect some clothes for a long trip north. It was an invitation to flight, to freedom. However…
“He came back to the police station even though he was able to run away. Why? Well, because that goes with the spirit of the people of the Piamonte: obey authority without stopping to measure the consequences, never back down, vindicate your ideas before God and men… Very typical of the Piedmontese. Surely in his decision to return to the barracks was present not to harm his father, his family. He had been in great pain since the death of his wife and his daughter and he did not want anyone to suffer because of him, “he says Federico to explain the irrational reaction spearheaded by his uncle Vittorio.
When they showed up again it was SS soldiers waiting for them. They were put on a train that stopped at Verona and whose destination was on the other side of the border with Austria. Upon getting off, Vittorio was tattooed as prisoner number 59.160. It was March 28, 1944. He had come to hell, to Mauthausen-Gusen.
just one to the
On April 9, he turned 40 surrounded by terror and death. Born in 1904 in Turn, by 1935 he had hung up his boots. He is part of the Torino champion of the League in 1927, a title that was abandoned due to the first great scandal in Italian football, the Allemandi case. A Torino manager was accused of buying the derby with Juventus (2-1 for the Granata squad).
Curiosities of life, he caught the attention of Luigi Ridolfi, a personal friend of Mussolini, old PNF shirt and owner of a Fiorentina that had just been promoted to Serie A. Staccione signed for the viola team. In Florence he shared a shirt and friendship with Bruno Neri, symbol of the anti-fascist resistance.
Hanging up his boots at a modest southern outfit, Vittorio returned home and found work at the FIAT. He soon distinguished himself in the factory as one of the most combative with the Duce’s Italy. Vittorio became one of the leaders of the strike that on March 1, 1944 stopped work in the large factories of northern Italy, with epicenters in Turin, Milan and Genoa.
From that day, the brothers Staccione they became big game for the OVRA. Their houses (11 o’clock Via Caselette Vittorio’s) were guarded day and night. The collection of incidents was long, such as the assault he suffered on August 10, 1937, in a bar on Via Migletti. Without saying a word, a black shirt And I broke a glass on his head.
Little more than a year the Staccione brothers lasted alive in the field of the 186 of the stairs of death. The record of the KZ dates his death on March 16, 1945. On the 27th, his brother’s death was recorded. Francesco. Battered with saa since his arrival, a deep wound on one leg, caused by the blows of the SS field, caused Vittorio’s death by drifting into gangrene.
“It is impossible to imagine what those men suffered in the German KZs. You read the testimonies of the survivors and you cannot believe that the bestiality of human beings such as their jailers is possible. The gratuitous cruelty, the insensitivity with the weakest, the old, the children… The madness. I have read a great deal of Mauthausen, but I cannot conceive what was going through my uncle’s head. He knew that her brother was there, the hunger, the fear, the terror of seeing a guard approaching… and the obligation of having to play football to amuse her murderers. It can not be understood. It is total annihilation,” says Federico.
Because the Nazis also liked football. “It was my turn on May 7. With a group of about 200 deportees I was assigned to Gusen. Many of us belonged to the Garibaldi Brigades. It was also a way of dividing us. They put us in a row of five, as usual. Another deportee and I were called by an officer. I have been told that you know how to play football. Is it true? he asked us. I said yes and added that I was a midfielder at Milan. The other deportee, his name was Vittorio Staccione, answered affirmatively, he had played in Torino. The officer wrote something down and made us go back to the group”, he narrates in his biography Ferdinando Valletti, former Milan player. l survive. A Vittorio he didn’t have time to play in those prison games organized for the delight of his guards and assassins.
his great tragedy
Vittorio Staccione was well acquainted with the prisons of Turin, as evidenced by the arrest records compiled by his nephew Federico Molinario. He was a combative man marked by great pain. On the banks of the Arno he met Giulia Vanetti, whom he married in a marriage that lasted very little, because Giulia and the daughter the couple was expecting died in February 1930. The girl, Maria Luisa he was going to call, he couldn’t breathe; the wife stopped a few days later in the hospital. He never got over it and the two of them stayed with him until the last time he breathed in Mauthausen.
