Second foreword

This chapter contains but a small fraction of a very strange UFO phenomenon, an ongoing story in central Europe for some forty years, of which very few people are aware, at least up to now. In Italy, the persons most deeply involved in this experience have named it “Amicizia”. In Germany it was known as “Freundschaft”, in the former Soviet Union as “Дружба”, and in France as “Amitié”. It is truly astonishing that so many people, mostly unknown to each other, chose the very same word to refer to their experience.

One of the chief characters within Amicizia was Bruno Sammaciccia, a man very active in those times. A lot of other people, literally hundreds, entered this story. As it started in 1956, it is not surprising that over the years many of them passed away. Such was also the case with Hans, a German friend of mine who died not long ago; I do not quote his family name, because he had asked me to conceal it.

This story is very unusual in many ways. First, it covered a span of time of more than 40 years. Second, people from at least five different countries were involved: Bruno speaks about Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and I might add Germany and France. Third, all of us were moved by the deep morality and sincere humanity on the part of the aliens. These were people who simply could not imagine doing any evil to anyone, people who were liking to eating well, to drinking, even to smoking, who were enjoying playing violins and tennis, driving luxurious cars and executive airplanes (in the 70’s, when very few people in Italy could own a personal plane), who were in deep love with us and with our planet, not as superiors but as true friends, or older brothers. They lived most of their times in their huge underground bases, but some of them lived among us, inside our society, playing every kind of roles in it. One was an university researcher, another one the managing director of a rather important textile company in the center of Italy, a third one was a senior manager in one of the largest German Telecommunications (TLC) companies, and so on. But the most important difference in all the contact stories I have read about consists of the role we earthlings played in the eyes of our counter-parts from so far away. They stated several times that we, the poor dwellers of this distressed planet, enjoy almost unique psychical abilities, while being totally unaware of that. They said that this peculiarity was one of the main reasons for their coming here. Often it was even funny for us to watch these people, with such fantastic technology at their side, begging our help in particular operations against their enemies. And, when the story came to an abrupt ending, it was because of a fault on our part, when most of the earthlings became frightened, or were simply deceived by the enemy, and ceased to support our friends. This development was enough to endanger them, reducing their superiority against their enemies, so that they had to stop their operations here and retreat back home, promising, however, to return in the future.

It was an explicit decision by Amicizia people to keep everything concealed under the strictest secrecy, and there were very good reasons for that. Actually, once in a while something would have emerged publically, but always in a vague and uncertain way. Many European UFO scholars were aware that something was happening, and they felt that it might have been something important. But nobody, outside our group, has ever had even the slightest idea of how big and how important it all was. Now, after so many years have elapsed, now that only a few persons survive, Bruno has decided to make his experiences known to scholars, and so he asked me to be his ghost-writer; I was to receive his memoires, and add them to a book I was already preparing. So, aside from what I had already written by myself, my role now involved spending many afternoons at Bruno’s, recording his memories, then, in my studio, listening to the tape, transcribing the data on my computer, trying to organize the concepts into some logical sequence. At the same time, from Germany, Hans, having heard of Bruno’s decision, decided to do the same, and sent me a file with his experiences, so that I could merge it with the other tales.

I must say that I did not welcome the request by my two friends, because I believe that such things should remain concealed. It’s not easy at all to tell such astonishing stories, facing the obvious risk of being taken as mythomaniacs, crazy people, hiding behind one’s academic credentials and successes at work. Nor is it easy to present mankind with such a tale, who does not seem prepared to accept it, or even to show interest in such things. The big project our friends had suggested to Bruno, and to which he has devoted all his resources, was actually intended to overcome this mental gap. But unfortunately, as you will see in the following pages, in the end the thick-skulled earthlings got the upper hand.

As you will see, my task was not easy, because my friend did not make an ordered sequence of reports, but was often “leapfrogging” from one concept to another, in the way we Latins call “Pindarics”. At times I have arranged his memories chronologically, while at others I preferred to leave them as they were told to me, to grant them their spontaneity. Unfortunately, my English is too poor to express the liveliness of some Italian expressions my friend often uses, but any way I believe I have tried my best to capture their flavour.

Writing this chapter was a most interesting and pleasant experience for me, both because I personally learned things of which I was totally unaware, and because I took pleasure in remembering feelings that I had shared with Bruno and the other actors within the group we had named Amicizia.

Unfortunately, just after the manuscript was completed, both Bruno first, and Hans a few months later, passed away. This posthumous collection of Bruno’s memories is intended as an homage to his mental stature and to his profound sense of humanity.

Fig 3-01

I hope to be pardoned for having deleted from this obituary all the references to Bruno’s family. I do not wish them to suffer any annoyance from this book. Also my German friend deserves my full respect, for he was a colleague of mine, a friend, and above all a very good man.

One of the question Bruno and I posed to each other, while thinking about writing this chapter, was what to do with the names of the persons involved. Although most of them are no longer with us, it would not be fair to present them using their actual names. On the other hand, many of them played important social roles in everyday life. Therefore presenting them under their true names would offer the reader convincing evidence that what is being told in this book is not foolish at all, but is in fact the story of what has actually happened to a group of people among which was represented every possible social level and cultural point of view. Bruno received four international awards honoris causa. I myself am very proud of my personal achievements. Giancarlo, another major figure, was just an accountant. I do not mean to disparage accountants, for my father was also one, but I want only want to stress how wide was the spectrum of professional and cultural backgrounds among the people of Amicizia (even one, or possibly two, Nobel laureates were involved). In order to protect the privacy of the persons quoted here, I had initially proposed Bruno to write a book devoted specifically to Amicizia, directly in English, with an American audience in mind, where identifications could probably not be made out so easily. Therefore this chapter was at first written in English, then re-translated into Italian, (now back to English again!) as part of the first edition of my book, and the people referred to are presented using just their first names.

As I have already mentioned, Bruno was a man with a humanistic background. He understood nothing of technology, nor was he interested in it. I am totally at the opposite, having a strong scientific background, over which I have evolved a humanistic skin. I have met many persons who, though having a scientific background, have opened their minds to humanistic culture, but, as far as I can remember, nobody among the people I know has ever gone the other way.

This is a real problem with Bruno. He is going to describe, through my computer, a shocking experience, in which technology was most important, but he did not recognize that. For instance, he tells of objects being “beamed” away via remote control, that is, being disintegrated at the place they were, and being reconstituted someplace else. To him it was just normal that something like that could actually happen. Therefore, Bruno will seem to tell a kind of a fairy tale, where transcendental things happen without evoking anything but a slight surprise on his part. Bruno’s real interests were in the moral meaning behind the experiences, in the feeling of Amicizia (friendship) which pervaded everything, in the spiritual nobility shown at all times by our friends, and, just to be a bit malicious, in finding confirmations of his attitudes when considering our reality, and then to find a surprising way of overcoming that point of view.

I am certain that this book will come as a real surprise to most scholars, because for a long time in Italy and in Germany some UFOlogists occasionally tried to get in touch with Amicizia people, often at no avail. Bruno was often sought out, but he almost always refused any contact. On just a couple of occasions he agreed to have a talk with someone, which he regretted having accepted, because afterwards rumors arose that he was a swindler! He was even accused of, and was tried on, charges of abuse of trust (he had been denounced by two persons who blamed him for their being disinherited by a wealthy relative), of which he was cleared. Preposterous! Among Bruno’s close friends were a general of the Carabinieri (the traditional Italian Police army), as well as bishops, prelates, managers and businessmen, and, by the way, myself.

Of course this history is totally unbelievable, nor does Bruno want to offer any evidence of that, except for a few pictures; I am aware that pictures may be fakes (as you will see, one IS a fake!), so that they are of low reliability as evidence. I can only underline the fact that most of them are Polaroid shots, and that in those years it was not an easy task to counterfeit Polaroid pictures. Aside from that, there were many attempts made to apply some of the physical principles suggested by our friends to our technology. But, as far as I know, there was only one success. It must be remembered, indeed, that Amicizia (the group of earthlings) was not a homogeneous set of people, but it consisted in many people, each with his own culture, needs, expectations and reactions, that some leaders (Bruno among them) tried to organize into a unified group. It was an attempt that failed badly.

Bruno had no need to try to convince anybody, nor was he interested in doing that. Despite many rumors about him, my friend never attempted to gain profit from this story. On the contrary, from the financial point of view, he spent a huge amount of his own; he even had to build a very large villa, following the designs made by our star friends, receiving there many guests there at his own expenses. Some persons were his guests for years, free of any charge. When the story ended tragically, Bruno lost billions of Liras (millions of dollars) literally overnight, and suffered severely from the aftereffects.

I like to quote from a person who knew him quite well:

Però il Sammaciccia resta per noi l’aquila che tocca altezze vertiginose, il Maestro sicuro di sé, per cui a volte, pur nella serenità di intesa, richiede una certa tensione per stargli dietro.

Quanto il Marhaba scrive nel suo prezioso volume per esprimere il pensiero, del resto assolutamente cristallino, del nostro comune amico e Maestro, coincide con il mio pensiero in pieno. ⁽¹⁾

(But to us Sammaciccia is like an eagle flying at dizzy heights, the Master sure of himself. At times a certain tension is required to understand his thoughts.

What Marhaba writes in his valuable book to explain the nevertheless crystal-clear thoughts of our common friend and Master, agrees exactly with my own feelings).

This chapter is meant to tell a very unusual story, for the benefit of those who will accept it. But, as Bruno liked to say, it will be like buying a diamond, believing that it is but a piece of glass.

Summing up, this chapter is the result of the work of three different persons, plus many more whom we are going to meet in the following pages.

Stefano Breccia

January the 15^th, 2006

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