A Masterpiece of Scholarship, a Masterpiece of Literature 
This oral history, justly awarded Italy's prestigious Premio Viareggio, is one of the finest books ever written on this subject. Whoever desires something more than a skin-deep understanding of contemporary Rome, should read Professor Portelli's landmark study of the impact of the Ardeatine Caves massacre on three generations of Romans of every social class and consequently on the very character of the Eternal City.
innovative research
This path-breaking book written by a well know oral historian shows again the masterly skills of the italian historian Portelli. The book is an essay in oral history and a piece on how societies deal with a traumatized past. In a sense it is a book on the creation of historical consciousness that is constructed by the individual and by collective agencies. I recommend it to all interested in (social) memory, narratives of the past, and the cultural transformation of memory. Besides its academic skill the book is also well written and reads like a novel. The voices of survivors and witnesses become audible.
Selma Leydesdorff
professor of oral history and culture
University of Amsterdam
editor of Memory and Narratives
On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335 unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack the day before. Alessandro Portelli has crafted an eloquent, multi-voiced oral history of the massacre, of its background and its aftermath. The moving stories of the victims, the women and children who survived and carried on, the partisans who fought the Nazis, and the common people who lived through the tragedies of the war together paint a many-hued portrait of one of the world's most richly historical cities. The Order Has Been Carried Out powerfully relates the struggles for freedom under Fascism and Nazism, the battles for memory in post-war democracy, and the meanings of death and grief in modern society.
order has been, carried, history, massacre, meaning, memory, order, rome
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