Also in the courtyard is a three-sided mural painted by students. One panel shows the boxcars crowded with prisoners. The mountains in the background are the ones we've been admiring. On another panel is Don Raimondo's bicycle. The phrases suggest how hard this is even for those who were there.
Today there are many former partisans in the piazza, some in uniform.
The members of the Associazione Nazionale Alpini proudly wear their feathered caps. The mayors of Borgo and of all the surrounding towns are here, as is Aldo Quaranta, the most celebrated Resistance leader from this valley, who will be honored later at City Hall. Then there are the citizens who just were moved to show up. Some of them glance at us, the three strangers in town, and smile. Herb nods and begins to recite in Hebrew the special version of El molei rahamim for martyrs.