On the afternoon of March 23, 1944, Rosario Bentivegna moved through the streets of central Rome. Clad in the gray outfit of a sanitation worker and pushing a garbage cart, the 22-year old looked inconspicuous. Bentivegna paused outside No. 156 on Via Rasella, a one-way, cobblestone street not far from the famed Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. There he awaited his target.
The target did not disappoint. A column of Order Police came up the street. These were Nazi security personnel mostly recruited from South Tyrol, formerly Austrian territory that Italy annexed after World War I. Three abreast and 150 strong, they sang as they marched back from a shooting range. These policemen always took the same route to their barracks. Bentivegna was ready for them.
Once a medical student, Bentivegna (1922-2012) had joined the illegal Communist Party of Italy (PCI) in 1943. Subsequently he joined a Patriotic Action Group (GAP), a Communist-led resistance organization belonging to the broad anti-fascist Committee of National Liberation (CLN). In the clandestine GAP, Bentivegna found comradeship with an astonishing group of young people dedicated to overthrowing fascism as a first step toward building a new, liberated society in Italy.
