Half a kilo of radioactive material (radium) was the subject of a dispute between partisans and the German army in the final months of the war in Italy: it was transported on a bicycle and buried for many months under the floor of a cellar. At the time, radium was of primary importance in cancer treatments and was sought after by Third Reich scientists, likely for the manufacture of new weapons. The quantities stored in health facilities in central Italy had already been requisitioned and shipped to Germany for this very reason. And the assets of the “Luigi Galvani” Radium Institute at Sant’Orsola Hospital, one of the most significant in all of Italy, seemed destined for the same fate. In the safe, well-shielded by enormous layers of lead, was found a good gram of radium, worth an estimated 100 million lire at the time. Having learned of the German plans, the Action Party executive decided to act preemptively. With the approval of the Emilia-Romagna National Liberation Committee, the partisans (primarily Mario Bastia and surgeon Filippo D’Ajutolo) contacted the doctors at Sant’Orsola to organize the plan. It was not a simple negotiation, on the contrary. First, because they had to consider how to protect the institute’s leaders (particularly director Giovanni Giuseppe Palmieri and his family) from the foreseeable Nazi reprisal: various options were considered, from exile in the mountains to crossing the border into Switzerland, including crossing enemy lines by sea using a submarine. And second, because everything was taking place in the climate of tension and suspicion that characterized daily life in Bologna in these months: right at the peak of its potential, for example, the plan seriously risked derailment due to doubts harbored by Palmieri and his collaborators regarding Bastia’s actual membership in the partisan movement, later confirmed at the last minute thanks to the fortuitous encounter with a mutual friend. Caution and hesitation, however, cost precious time. In the first half of July, the Germans did indeed knock on the door of Sant’Orsola. After further pressure from the partisans, towards the end of the month, the director (whose son, medical student Gianni Palmieri, would die a few months later as a partisan medic, earning the Gold Medal for Military Valor posthumously) went to Villa Torri with the precious material under his arm. Once everything was delivered to Bastia, Palmieri was taken to safety in recently liberated Florence. The precious little box (now kept at the Parri Institute) instead ended up in D’Ajutolo’s home on Via San Vitale, in whose basement the radium was finally buried a few days later. It was a successful hiding place, so much so that it remained undetected even during thorough searches in the following months. Between September and October, several partisans were arrested or killed by the Nazis: Bastia himself lost his life in what went down in history as the “Battle of the University.” On May 8, 1945, the precious material returned to Sant’Orsola, “well escorted by numerous police officers.” The requisitioned half was recovered in Germany by the American army and returned to the city a few years later.
