Italy: Mario Fiorentini, legendary Italian Resistance figure, dies at 103

Rome: Mario Fiorentini, a legendary figure in the Italian Resistance movement during the second world war, died in Rome on Monday night at the age of 103.

Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri hailed Fiorentini’s “courage and humanity”, describing him as a “symbol of the Italian anti-fascist Resistance” who “distinguished himself in Rome in the fight against Nazi-fascism”.

A leader of the Gruppi di Azione Patriottica (GAP), Fiorentini is best remembered for his role in organising the Via Rasella attack in which 33 German soldiers were killed.

Although not physically involved in the attack, he was the first to notice that the occupying Nazi forces regularly passed through Via Rasella, a narrow street near Piazza Barberini in the centre of Rome.

On 23 March 1944, Italian Resistance fighters detonated a homemade bomb in a rubbish cart, resulting in the deaths of 33 members of the Bozen military police as the patrol turned into the steep street.

The SS command in Rome under Herbert Kappler ordered an immediate, brutal reprisal – allegedly approved by Hitler – leading to the rounding up and killing of 335 partisans, prisoners, Jews and civilians in the Ardeatine massacre.

Fiorentini was involved in numerous resistance operations – including a lone attack on the Regina Coeli prison in Rome as well as leading a Resistance mission in northern Italy – earning himself three silver medals for military valour.

After the war he became a noted academic and mathematician, and was professor of geometry at the University of Ferrara.

He was married to Luciana Ottobrini, a fellow partisan who died in 2015, and he is survived by his daughter Claudia.