Marco De Paolis, the prosecutor who opened the closet of shame: "Nazi-Fascist massacres, my exhibition is for young people."

Monza – An old, one-armed doll is sealed in a glass case, next to an alarm clock set to 6:52, the time when time stood still in Sant'Anna di Stazzema . She was the playmate of little Franca Maria Gamba, one of the 360 ​​victims of the 1944 massacre. Now she's at the Villa Reale, part of an exhibition that's touring Italy and preparing to arrive in a Europe increasingly preoccupied with the current war scenarios. Under the aegis of the Defense General Staff and the Military Attorney General's Office, the exhibition sends a message of peace to the world by bringing justice to the horrors of the past.

" Despite the long time that has passed... The Nazi-Fascist Massacres in the War of Liberation 1943." This is the evocative title of the exhibition curated by Marco De Paolis , military prosecutor general at the Military Court of Appeal in Rome. It was he who, in 2002, ushered in the great season of trials linked to the discovery in 1994 in Rome of the so-called "cupboard of shame." Inside were 695 hidden files on Nazi-Fascist massacres: a discovery that, 50 years later, allowed justice to be done for the major Nazi-Fascist massacres in Italy after the armistice, from Civitella to Marzabotto (200 and 200 victims), through 57 life sentences.

Attorney, let's start with the title: how many messages does it evoke?

"Despite the long time that has passed" is the opening line of the provisional archiving order that unlawfully concealed the 695 files in 1960. It highlights the effort and commitment of today's military judiciary, which, despite the long time that has passed, has redeemed the dark pages of the 1960s since 1996, carrying out its duty with honor and passion, conducting hundreds of proceedings and holding 24 trials despite the many years that had passed since the events, in an effort to ensure today the justice that was denied to tens of thousands of citizens then."

How difficult was it in those years, starting from your role as chief military prosecutor in La Spezia, to "open the closet"?

"All the other military prosecutors had stopped investigating, believing they were all dead. In reality, the people were alive; the evidence was there. We created a new structure; we were just two magistrates and we didn't even have a judicial police office. Instead... In 16 years, I've interrogated 1,200 people."

The exhibition is ready to make its international debut. Where will it go?

"She's already been to Frankfurt, and will soon be going to the United Nations in Geneva, then to Berlin. There are also contacts with Canada."

This exhibition is aimed primarily at young people and schools. What do you want to leave them with?

The exhibition was born from an idea by the Chief of Defense Staff, General Enzo Vecciarelli, who, accepting my proposal to establish a documentation center with the collected material, proposed a cultural journey and a journey to relive the memory. It is aimed at young people. Those who come here are left to their own devices about what happened: this is what humanity creates, unfortunately, even today.

The horror trail ends at a wall. Above, Gianni Rodari's "Promemoria": "There are things to do every day: wash, study, play... There are things to never do: neither by day nor by night, neither at sea nor on land: for example, war."