271 DAYS

271 DAYS

September 8, 1943 - June 4, 1944

The Resistance in Rome

The project tells the story of the 271 days of the Nazi occupation of Rome during World War II. The images show how the places where the most significant events of those nine months took place look like today, photographed respecting the date and time they occurred. Images of the present-day city, in which through a detail in the photo and the reading of the captions (which are an integral part of the work), a visual short circuit is created that brings our thoughts back to the historical events. The outcome is a sort of map of the Roman Resistance, which, through images, links the city of today to that of yesterday, recounting a key chapter in Italian history.

The uniqueness of those months lies not only in their historical importance but also in the clear emergence of the emotions of men and women faced with the challenge of making choices. It is as if Rome in those days had been turned into a theater, a well-defined space and time, in which the various aspects of human character are staged and radicalized: courage, youth, adventure, suffering, fear, hunger and cold, violence and torture, meanness, sense of community, sacrifice and altruism, hope, betrayal, love and death. An exceptional moment in history where, in the span of nine months, in a city closed in upon itself, all aspects of life and of the human being emerge.

The photos, shot on large format film with a view camera, were taken over a period of three years, after a thorough historical research, based on the study of documents from books and archives.

271 Days is a visual investigation of the landscape, a reading of urban spaces in the light of their emotional and historical significance, and a reflection on photography in connection with memory. 271 Days is a declaration of love for the city of Rome and an attempt to reawaken through photography a collective awareness and participation of the places lived in, starting from the recognition of the value of their history. The Resistance soul, its unspeakable pains, its warm feelings are still there, before our eyes, in the everyday metropolitan landscape.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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Caltrops. A weapon widely used by partisans during the occupation to block German vehicles' passage on the consular roads of the city. It was built using two iron rods with points, bent into an L shape, and welded together. When thrown to the ground, they always had one point upwards. A nursery rhyme was common among the suburbs' children: "How many points, how many points, / How many points does this nail have? / One point for me, one point for you, / four points for him!" The pictured nail belonged to Rosario Bentivegna, one of the most important partisans in Rome.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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September 8, 1943 at 7.30 pm - Ponte della Magliana. Fighting begins between the Germans and the Italian Army for the occupation of Rome. The Germans try to enter the city from the southwest attacking the Cornerstone n. 5. The first shot was fired on the evening of September 8, a few hours after the announcement of the armistice signed by General Badoglio. In that morning, the King had fled Rome, leaving the Army with no commands.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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September 10, 1943, at 6.00 pm - Porta San Paolo. The Porta San Paolo battle is the last attempt to defend the city from Nazi occupation. Alongside the Italian soldiers, many civilians fought, hence the importance of this event that marked the beginning of the Resistance in Rome. Among the many people fighting, Raffaele Persichetti, a much-loved teacher and partisan, was shot dead at the very spot where the photograph was taken.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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October 16, 1943 at 05:30 am - Portico d'Ottavia. Deportation from the Ghetto On the dawn of Saturday, October 16 (remembered as the Black Saturday), at 5:30 am, the hunt for Roman Jews begins throughout the city. The raid is carried out by a special division of the SS under the command of Captain Donneker. The focus of the operation is the old Jewish quarter. The Germans close the Ghetto streets, enter the houses and arrest all the residents. The people arrested are gathered in an open space in front of the Portico d'Ottavia, where they are loaded onto grey trucks covered by canvas. The operation lasts hours and ends at 2 pm with the arrest of 1024 people, including 207 children. Two days later, they were loaded onto a train of 18 plumbed wagons and deported to Auschwitz. Only 16 people returned from there, not one child.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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October 20, 1943 - Tiber Island "K's epidemic". Doctor Giovanni Borromeo hid over a hundred Jews who escaped the Nazi raid of 16 October in the Ghetto in a ward of the nearby Fatebenefratelli hospital on the Tiber Island. For them he invented an extremely dangerous infectious disease, which he called 'K's epidemic' (K stood for Kappler or Kesselring). The SS, fearing contagion, never broke into the isolation ward.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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October 25, 1943 - Aereal Section of San Gioacchino. At the initiative of the parish priest Father Antonio Dressino and the engineer Pietro Lestini, 17 people, including Jews, military stragglers and political fugitives, find refuge in a large room between the vault and the roof of the church of San Gioacchino. To avoid being detected by the Germans, who also search religious institutes, on November 3 they are walled up in the refuge. They will remain closed there until the Liberation of Rome in June; the only contact with the outside world will be a trap door in the rose window of the church to provide them with food and to deliver letters. Thus, was born the "San Gioacchino Aereal Section" (SASG), which saved the lives of the 17 refugees and earned the organizers the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by the Yad Vashem.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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December 1, 1943 - Fort Bravetta. Tommaso Moro's hoax. Forte Bravetta is the place where all death sentences by shooting were carried out during the months of Nazi occupation. 70 Roman partisans were killed in this place. In the early hours of December 1, 1943, the legendary partisan Tommaso Moro (war name for Vincenzo Guarniera) with his men of the communist group Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) attacked a PAI (African Italian Police) truck carrying the firing squad sent to Fort Bravetta to carry out the death sentence on seven partisans. Dressed in the uniforms of the fascist soldiers, Guarniera and the members of his formation entered the fort, making themselves known as the platoon expected for the shooting and lined up to carry out the sentence, but at the moment of firing they fired on the guard of the fort and the German officers. They crush the garrison and free the partisans sentenced to death, managing to escape.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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December 20, 1943 - Valle dell'Inferno and Vittorio Mallozzi. Among the rebellious and anti-fascist suburbs of Rome, Valle Aurelia, known as Hell Valley, stands out during the Nazi occupation. It was inhabited by the "fornaciari", workers of the furnaces that produced the bricks for the capital buildings. A community of people linked by hard work, so much to be cited as a model by Lenin, who called it a "Little Russia", developed there. Among these workers, there were many armed Resistance protagonists, including Vittorio Mallozzi, a furnace worker himself and a former fighter in the Spanish Civil War. As a PCI (Italian Communist Party) area commander, he carried out many daring actions against the occupants until he fell into the Germans' hands on December 20, 1943. After a month of torture, he was shot on January 31, 1944, at Forte Bravetta together with 9 other partisans. He was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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December 28, 1943 at 11:50 am - Via della Lungara. Mario Fiorentini attacks the Regina Coeli Prison. On the morning of December 28, GAP (Patriotic Action Groups) partisan Mario Fiorentini stands on the Lungotevere in front of the wall above the entrance to the Regina Coeli prison on Via della Lungara. The partisans have organized the action to send a message of solidarity to the comrades locked up there. At the moment of the changing of the guard, Fiorentini launches a piece (a homemade bomb, built by an iron pipe filled with explosives) on 28 German soldiers in front of the prison gate. Eight Germans die from the explosion; others are wounded. From the prison's windows the Nazis open fire on him as he climbs back on his bicycle and flees across Ponte Mazzini. He succeeds in saving himself by slipping through the alleys of the center. The following day, the Germans forbid the use of bicycles by civilians throughout the city.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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January 3, 1944 - Oltremare Guesthouse. The Koch gang. On January 3, 1944, Lieutenant Pietro Koch, along with a dozen members of the fascist special police, moved into the three apartments that make up the Oltremare Guesthouse, on the fifth floor of a building near Termini Station, in Via Principe Amedeo 2. From January to April, this was the gang's headquarters, which turned it into a prison and a place of torture among the most terrible in the city's history. Through the brutality of the means used, the heinous torture and an extensive network of informants, the Koch gang managed to decimate the ranks of Roman anti-fascists. In the premises of this prison, which was a real place of terror, is now based Radio Radicale, a political news radio, and in the old room where the interrogations took place there is now a recording room.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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January 4, 1944 - Verano Cemetery. Wall of the deportee. On 4 January 1944, 292 people were taken from Regina Coeli Prison and deported to Mathausen camp in Germany. During the nine months of occupation of Rome, Germans and fascists carried out numerous roundups in the city to arrest and deport Jews, political opponents, draft evaders and men as a force job to be sent to Germany 2728 Roman citizens will die in Nazi camps.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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January 31, 1944, at 11:00 am - via Milano corner of via Nazionale. The Raid. An extensive round-up operation organized by SS commander Herbert Kappler begins at 11 am. With the help of a fascist battalion, departments of SS and German soldiers close off a large area around Via Nazionale. Machine guns and armored vehicles are placed at the entrances to the area, in various streets, including Via Milano. In less than two hours, the Germans round-up 2000 citizens, load them onto trucks and take them to the Macao barracks in Castro Pretorio. After the selections, about 800 men are sent to labor camps in Germany, in Hannover, or to build fortifications on the Anzio front. There will be countless of raids throughout the city for the entire period of occupation, but this is the real raking on a large scale: it employs 1500 men and 200 vehicles.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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March 3, 1944 at 11:04 a.m. - Bombing. Antiaircraft shelter. After the Allied landing at Anzio on January 22 and the German army's tenacious defense on the Anzio-Nettuno bridgehead and at Cassino, the Allies launch the Operation Strangle from the air. This consists of continuous bombings aiming to break the main road and rail communication routes to prevent Wehrmacht supplies and help the offensive that would be launched towards Rome. Thus, the bombs began again to fall heavily on Rome on March 3, from 11.04 to 12.37 am. At the end of that single day, there were 600 dead and 10.000 homeless. The bombings will then follow almost every day for weeks and months: the sound of the sirens and the consequent run to the air-raid shelters, scattered all over the city, will become part of the daily life of the Romans.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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March 10, 1944 - via Tomacelli. Fascist procession. Ambush of a formation of the central GAP (Patriotic Action Group) to a fascist procession that parades along via Tomacelli. From behind the kiosks of the market in Piazza Monte d’Oro, the partisans attack the head of the procession made up of soldiers from "Honor and Combat", three of whom are killed and numerous wounded. Following this attack, carried out in broad daylight in the city center, which surprises and ridicules the fascists, the Germans will ban the fascists from carrying out public demonstrations.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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March 23, 1944, at 3.52 pm - Via Rasella. Attack. After a long stalking, at 15.52 partisan Rosario Bentivegna detonates a garbage cart loaded with TNT in via Rasella 155, in front of Palazzo Tittoni. The explosion caused the death of 32 soldiers from the Bozen battalion who were parading down the street at that moment (another soldier will die the next day). The action is organized by the central GAP (Patriotic Action Group) of the Communist Party, three other partisans attack the bottom of the column by throwing hand grenades.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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24 March 1944 at 3.30-8.00 pm - Fosse Ardeatine. Cavern of the Massacre. In retaliation for the attack of Via Rasella, SS commander Herbert Kappler, on direct orders from Hitler, demands the killing of 335 Italians, including partisans, Jews and civilians randomly rounded up. At 3.30 pm on Friday, March 24, 1944, the massacre began in the quarries on Via Ardeatina. Following a maniacal organization, the prisoners, with their hands tied behind their backs, are forced in groups of five into the quarries' tunnels. When they reach the bottom of the tunnel, they are made to kneel down and executed with a gunshot to the back of the head. At 8 pm, the shooting ends. The bodies of the 335 men killed are collected in two piles at the bottom of the tunnels. Before leaving the caves, the Germans undermine the entrances and blow them up to seal each entrance.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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April 3, 1944 - Forte Bravetta. Don Morosini. Forte Bravetta is the place where all the death sentences by shooting of the partisans arrested during the months of Nazi occupation are carried out. The executions decided by the German Court take place in front of the embankment in the parade ground of the Fort. At dawn on 3 April Don Giuseppe Morosini, parish priest and partisan, was also shot here. His story was resumed by Roberto Rossellini for a famous scene from the film "Roma, open city".

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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April 16, 1944 - Santa Maria Maggiore. In the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore a mass is organized by anti-fascist students to commemorate the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine, including the professor and partisan of the Action Party, Pilo Albertelli, who will give the name to the Lyceum next to the basilica. After the mass, leaflets against the Nazis are distributed and a rally is held, a fascist soldier intervenes who is killed by a gunshot fired by Arminio Savioli, partisan of the GAS (Student Action Groups).

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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June 4, 1944 - Porta Maggiore. Liberation. At 6.30 pm on Sunday, June 4, the 2nd Battalion of the Black Devils enters Rome from Porta Maggiore. The Allies' arrival marks the end of the Nazi occupation of the city that had lasted nine long months. According to the chronicle, the first soldier to enter Rome is the Italian-American Tito Vittorio Gozzer.

© Daniele Molajoli - Image from the 271 DAYS photography project
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August 16, 1944 - Interior of Mario Fiorentini's house. On the morning of August 16, the two partisans, Mario Fiorentini and Lucia Ottobrini get married in the city Hall of Rome, in Piazza del Campidoglio. Lucia has sewn her wedding dress with an American parachute, Mario will leave a few days later to continue the Resistance in Northern Italy. Many love stories are born during the partisan fight, Fiorentini and Ottobrini's is one of the most beautiful, it will last a lifetime.

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