Milan, 29 April (LaPresse) – ‘Eighty years ago, 25 April 1945 was the start of the insurrection, destined to end the following week with the surrender of the Nazi troops and their fascist allies. The retreat towards Germany saw the German columns, in Piedmont as in other parts of Italy, stain themselves with new horrific crimes. And so it was in Santhià and nearby towns, where the massacre of 29 April painfully marked those territories, in the most difficult days for the Liberation'. Thus the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, in a message sent to the mayor of the municipality of Santhià, in the province of Vercelli, Angela Ariotti. ‘The retreat of the Third Reich's 75th Army Corps overwhelmed the truce agreed between the Partisan Command and the German Command: forty-eight were the victims among partisans and civilians of Nazi violence in Santhià and the nearby farmsteads between 29 April and 1 May 1945,’ he added. ‘Only the outstanding mediation skills of the provost, Monsignor Giovanni Ravetti, prevented the price paid in terms of human lives from being even higher. The Republic awarded the population of Santhià the Bronze Medal for Military Valour, underlining ‘the sad and painful privilege of suffering the last German reprisals when by then the flag of freedom was flying in Piedmont and Lombardy’. To the community of Santhià, which, every 29 April, huddles in the memory of the victims, witnesses of the path towards freedom and democracy, come the feelings of the most intense participation and solidarity,' Mattarella concluded.