Desperate Inscriptions: Graffiti from the Nazi Prison in Rome 1943-1944
by: Pugliese, Stanislao G.

Softcover. Boca Raton FL, Bordighera Press , 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations. Tucked away on Via Tasso in a middle-class district in the Eternal City--a stone's throw from the Basilica of St. John in Lateran--the former prison is now the Museo Storico della Liberazione di Roma, commemorating the liberation of Rome by Resistance fighters and Allied troops in June 1944. Within, anti-fascist partisans scrawled graffiti full of pathos and the romantic idealism that so permeated the Italian Resistance. A visitor today can still read the desperate inscriptions, collected in this volume along with recollections by inmates and narratives concerning the Via Tasso. Pugliese's thoughtful narrative, accompanied by black-and-white photos by Lianna Miuccio, documents the lives of such antifascist prisoners as Arrigo Paladini, who wrote on the wall as he was dying, "There is nothing that can give the joy of a beautiful death as the consciousness of having served the country until the last breath of life." This book examines the inscriptions on the walls, translates them, shows Miuccio's stark photos of them, and gives a historical context, timeline, and survivor and family interviews. Clean copy. Scarce.