Engaged post-mortem: the shipments of sailors killed by torpedoes during World War II: Engaged post-mortem: the shipments of sailors killed by torpedoes during World War II

• Autor(a) principal: Piovezan, Adriane
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista Nordestina de História do Brasil (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://rnhb.com.br/index.php/revista/article/view/54
• topic: Morte; Segunda Guerra Mundial; Marinha de Guerra; Monumentos Fúnebres; Death; World War II; Navy; Funeral Monuments

In 1960 the Monument to the Dead of Brazil in WWII was inaugurated in Rio de Janeiro. The commission for the repatriation of the dead since 1953 sought to decide the final destination of the remains of soldiers killed in Italy during the conflict. From the construction of a specific monument, the need to favor other forces besides the FEB (Brazilian Expeditionary Force) becomes essential. The discourse of national unity against the common enemy in an all-out war meant that all forces should be remembered in the monument. The Navy was the weapon that counted the greatest losses in the conflict, but without direct confrontation and without corpses the homage to those dead would be disproportionate in the narrative proposed by the monument. The solution was to transfer 4 corpses of dead representatives of the Brazilian Navy from the Northeast to Rio de Janeiro. Based on the exhumation documentation of the corpses and periodicals of the period, it is possible to perceive the conflicts of this resolution, which sought to justify a discourse and to insert it into the narrative of a funeral monument.