Arandora Star: National Day of Remembrance established. A moral redemption for Picinisco and the Comino Valley
Parliament passes law to remember the victims of the 1940 shipwreck. Picinisco, the hardest hit municipality in the province of Frosinone, welcomes the recognition with emotion.
It is a painful page of history, which for too long has remained on the margins of school books, but which in the Comino Valley is engraved in the memory of every family. From today, the sacrifice of the victims of the’Arandora Star is state law.
The Chamber of Deputies definitively approved the establishment of the National Day of Remembrance for the Italian victims of the Arandora Star shipwreck, set for the’11 October of each year.
An historic result that deeply affects our territory, in particular the municipalities of Picinisco, Cassino and Viticuso, which paid a very high toll in terms of human lives.
The forgotten tragedy
On 2 July 1940, a few days after Italy entered the war, the British liner Arandora Star - requisitioned to deport Italians living in the UK considered “enemy aliens” to Canada - was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. On board were not soldiers, but emigrants: men who had left the Comino Valley and Italy in search of work and dignity. Of the approximately 1,500 people on board, There were 800 victims. 446 of them were Italians.
The blood tribute of Picinisco
Picinisco is the municipality in the province of Frosinone with the highest number of losses: 18 fellow citizens ascertained (out of 65 total in the province), but the numbers could be even higher.
“The establishment of a national day of remembrance is a fitting recognition not only for Piciniscans, but for all 446 Italian victims, guilty only of having been in the UK in search of redemption,” declares the Mayor of Picinisco, Marco Scappaticci.
The first citizen recalled how the community has never stopped honouring these men: from the 2019 national conference to the participation in the ceremonies in Edinburgh and Liverpool, to the creation of the’commemorative epigraph in the Picinisco Mountain Park, a place of silence and memory that we invite everyone to visit.
A story of emigration and roots
During the debate in the House, the Hon. Claudio Mancini, a Member of Parliament from the Comino Valley, who shared a touching personal testimony:
“In the small town in the Lazio Apennines where my family comes from, Picinisco, there have been 18 deaths. Among them, two of my grandfather's brothers: Italians like many, who emigrated to work in the late 19th and early 20th century.”
Mancini pointed out that the Arandora Star tragedy mirrors our emigration: “It often happens for territorial nuclei that remain cohesive. It also happened like this in the tragedy: once interned, many countrymen stayed together, and together they died.”
What the law provides for
Each 11 October a minute's silence in memory of the 446 Italians who perished. The law also promotes events, public ceremonies and educational initiatives in schools, so that the new generations may learn about the sacrifice of our emigrants.
For the Valle di Comino, this law is not just a formal act, but a collective embrace to our grandparents and fathers who, far from home, lost their lives dreaming of a better future for their land.