Saretto Pacts
The Pacts of Saretto were between the Italian Liberation Movement and the French Resistance.
On May 30-31,1944, Dante Livio Bianco, political commissioner of the First Brigade "Justice and Freedom" and delegate of the Piedmont National Liberation Committee, together with Maurice Juvenal, Head of the 2nd Region of the French Interior Forces ", following cordial conversations and in a framework of mutual understanding, proclaimed the unity of their political objectives".
In the name of their respective movements, the holders of the document (drawn up in French) declared that:
“Among the French and Italian peoples there is no reason for resentment and shock to the recent political and military past, which commits the responsibility of their respective governments and not that of the peoples themselves, both victims of oppression and corruption regimes; confirm full French-Italian solidarity and fraternity in the fight against fascism and Nazism and the forces of reaction, as a necessary preliminary phase for the establishment of democratic freedoms and social justice, in a free European community; (…) agree to commit the forces of their respective organisations to the achievement of these objectives, in a spirit of full understanding and on a European reconstruction plan”.
The pacts, signed in the village of Cuneense, were remembered in their seventieth anniversary by postal Italy with a special Cancellation.
On April 24th, 2007, the Pacts of Saretto were commemorated with a 60 cent stamp.
The commemorative plaque of emigrants at Col Sautron base
DOCUMENTI
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Cahiers de la Méditerranée - I "patti" di Saretto 31 maggio 1944 ed i loro riflessi militari - Aldo Alessandro Mola
- http://www.persee.fr/doc/camed_0395-9317_1996_num_52_1_1159
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I “PATTI DI SARETTO” (30-31 MAGGIO 1944) Il contributo cuneese alla costruzione dell'Europa democratica
di Aldo A. Mola - Prefazione di Gianna Gancia, Presidente della Provincia di Cuneo.
The drawings, the symbol of the philatelic cancellation and the poster for the 70th anniversary of the pacts in 2014, were designed by Giorgio Arrigoni, an artist of Acceglio, nephew of the Saretto hoteliers who hosted the partisans of Dante Livio Bianco and Maurice Juvenal of the French (with great danger because the in Acceglio Nazis and the Fascists already occupied the municipal seat).
Giorgio and his sister Marta Arrigoni have always kept this chapter of history alive and deserve a memory (in the photo you can see from the right, Prof. Aldo Alessandro Mola and Marta Arrigoni in the center, on the door of the house (then Osteria) where the Pacts were signed.