1942 Christmas in Russia: documentary film on Alpini from Abruzzo

PESCOCOSTANZO – The invitation is for Thursday 29 December at 18 in Piazza Municipio in Pescocostanzo with the Alpini, to commemorate the 80 YEARS of the battle of SELENYJ JAR, a tribute that Anna Cavasinni and Fabrizio Franceschelli are now offering to the numerous Alpini of the AQUI Btg who from Russia they were unable to return, or returned seriously injured.

“Valentino was with the Julia and in Selenyy Jar he was alone, on the front line, right in the Christmas week of 1942. He heard the cries of his fellow soldiers from the Btg Vicenza who were at 40 degrees below zero, he lost the use of his legs. He was only twenty ”.

For December 29, the initiative comes from the local Alpine Group ANA of Pescocostanzo, with the collaboration of the Municipality. The screening lasting about an hour and a quarter) will be preceded by some institutional interventions and a brief introduction by the authors.
There have really been so many Alpine troops who have agreed to collaborate in the last twenty years: these are unrepeatable interviews, sometimes moving, which are part of an extraordinary personal archive.

On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the tragic battle on the Don River, the two Abruzzo directors are spreading this gift among the Abruzzo population in memory of those young Alpine troops who died in combat or in prison camps, or were declared missing among the steppes. The Christmas battle of 1942 was in fact the most terrible for the Italian Army and in particular for our Alpini.

To contribute now to the dissemination of a page of history still unknown to many and which risks falling into oblivion, thus the initiative was born to present two themed documentary films in schools and in countries that wish to do so. At the end of each meeting, spectators will be able to receive copies of the DVD and accompanying books as a precious Christmas gift, which will be distributed free of charge while supplies last.

Anna Cavasinni and Fabrizio Franceschelli are directors and anthropologists, authors of a series of films in 10 episodes, entitled THE WAR AT THE HOME, on the Second World War in Abruzzo. They both work for RAI, and Fabrizio Franceschelli has been a correspondent for the program Chi ‘ha visto?
The first seven episodes of the series were broadcast with numerous reruns by RAI Storia between 2012 and 2018. And these days the directors are completing the double DVD on the victory of Monte Morone, made in co-production with the Abruzzi Section of the ANA Association Nazionale Alpini, with the cultural association Territori Link and with the participation of numerous ANA groups from Abruzzo and Molise.

To close with a further example, of the approximately 1700 Alpini “dressed in Sulmona and then climbed on the traversed gorges as far as Gorizia on 16 August 1942, only 106 returned”: a truly generous blood tribute on the part of those young people who had left with the dream of going to defend their homeland, of fighting a ferocious enemy who at that moment, according to fascist propaganda, constituted a real danger for Italy.