Garden of L'Aquila - National Boarding School "Domenico Cotugno"

On 6 March 2019, the Garden of the Righteous was inaugurated at the temporary headquarters of the National Boarding School "Domenico Cotugno". After the 2009 earthquake, the school was transferred to a removable structure and is waiting to return to the historical site.

The initiative is the result of a collaboration between the Abruzzo Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Italy and the National Boarding School.

The School Director Serenella Ottaviano stressed the importance of the Garden of the Righteous, defining it as: "A place of memory, a warning to promote the idea of sharing, of commitment against all forms of violence, oppression, discrimination in an age marked by fear”.

The President of the I.A.S.R.I.C., Carlo Fonzi, stressed the Institute's commitment to keeping memory alive through initiatives such as this or the "Memory and Travel" project, which every year brings the history of internment and deportations to the attention of over 200 students and teachers from high schools of Abruzzo. Tommaso Cotellessa, student representative said that "this is an innovative initiative, and we need it at a time when, too often, there is a lack of memory and justice".

The ceremony was also attended by Massimiliano Nardocci, deputy director of the Regional School Office, and ended with the performance of the musical composition "Il seme dell'umanità", composed by Francesco Serone, a student of music high school, who conducted the school orchestra for the occasion. The event was attended by relatives of the Righteous, representatives of the schools of Cotugno, representatives of associations.

Amalia Agnelli, the brothers Annina and Luigi Santomarrone, the young Giulio Aleandri, who died at the age of 17: are the Righteous to whom a plaque and a shrub have been dedicated; Alongside these men and women, who during the Second World War worked to save and protect British and Slav prisoners, as well as persecuted Jews, there are also those of the Brazilian activist Marielle Franco, killed in 2018 for her commitment to defending human rights, and the Malian librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, who in 2012 organized the rescue of more than 350 thousand ancient manuscripts of Islamic culture from the iconoclastic violence of the fundamentalist Jihadist militias.

The names of the Righteous were chosen by a Committee composed of the promoter of the initiative, David Adacher, teacher of Cotugno and member of the Abruzzo Institute for the History of Resistance and Contemporary Italy, together with the teacher Anna Lucia Bonanni and the student Sara Ramzi of Cotugno, Gilberto Marimpietri and Riccardo Lolli of IASRIC.