Turin 2006 Winter Olympics

FEATURE - Turin's Alpine residents recall bloody past
By Sophie Hardach

PINEROLO, Italy, Jan 31 (Reuters) - Like the thousands of athletes and visitors streaming to next month's Winter Olympics in the Alps near Turin, Felice Burdino loves the mountains.

Unlike them, he looks at the peaks and valleys with a feeling of sadness as well as pleasure.

As a young man, the 88-year-old Italian fought German occupiers on the slopes where skiers will be battling for gold medals in February.

He saw soldiers burn down parts of the villages that will provide a picturesque backdrop to the Olympic races, and ambushed German troops on the winding roads that connect the venues for the Turin Games.

Despite the horrors of World War Two, he still feels deep affection for the mountains and sometimes retraces the hidden paths he used as a partisan.

"The mountains have always been a great school for me. A school of intelligence, courage, of great friendship. The resistance has given me even more," Burdino told Reuters at his house in Pinerolo, which faces a snowy mountain chain.

"I was enriched by joy, and then I was enriched by pain. And the mountains are still an infinite joy to me."

The area stretching from Turin to the French border that hosts the Olympics from Feb. 10 to 26 was the main battleground for the Italian resistance during the war.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini had been Adolf Hitler's ally but as the country started to lose the war his successor Pietro Badoglio negotiated an armistice with Allied forces.

When the armistice was announced on Sept. 8, 1943, Germany occupied northern Italy.

BELLA CIAO

There are still many signs of the region's tumultuous past, and even young Italians show pride in the partisan struggle -- most of them know the song of the resistance, 'Bella Ciao'.

Partisans ranged from peasant boys to philosopher and writer Primo Levi, and archive photographs show smiling young men with caps and cardigans who look more like students on a mountain trip than combatants.

Yet the motley crew, supported by Allied forces, eventually succeeded in driving the Germans out of Italy.

"When September 8 came, my brother and I said instinctively, 'Let's go to the mountains'. It wasn't a political decision, it was a decision of conscience," said Burdino, sitting in a study crammed with books.

The Olympic venues are strongly connected to the history of the resistance and its enemies.

Bardonecchia, which will host the snowboarding event, used to be a fascist summer camp. The camp's buildings lay abandoned for decades and have been renovated for the Games.

Sestriere, the Alpine skiing venue, was built as a ski resort in the 1930s by the Agnelli family, founders of Fiat.

Historian Alberto Turinetti di Priero told Reuters that a ski teacher called Maggiorino Marcellin set up a partisan brigade there that eventually took control of the area, then fought bloody battles with German forces.

Former partisan Burdino has spent almost all his life in Pinerolo, where the Olympic curling competition will take place.

"We would go on our bicycles and attack army lorries. It was a hit-and-run strategy, guerrilla tactics," the retired teacher told Reuters.

MUSSOLINI'S FORTS

Only 26 years old when he entered the resistance, Burdino led a group of younger combatants since he had already served in the Italian army and knew the territory well.

One of his first actions was to steal weapons from abandoned fortresses built by Mussolini close to the French border, many of which can still be visited today.

"Later, after I killed a German I would take his weapons. Usually we shot at them from afar so you'd only see that one of them fell and the others carried him away," Burdino said.

He recalled however one time when he shot a German driver at close range, then looked at the dead man with a mixture of pity and shame.

"But I didn't attack Germany. They came to steal from us, they took away our grain, our cattle. We were like a colony," he added, slowly taking off his big glasses and resting his wrinkled face in his hands.

Last year, Burdino published a diary he kept during the war under the title 'Diario Partigiano'.

Despite his experience, he said he liked the Germans -- who are expected to win many of the peaceful battles over scores and timings at the Olympics next month.>