Diego Biagini 1894 - 1944

Born 19.4.1894 in Prato
Died 8.4.1944 in Mauthausen

Biography

Diego Biagini was an anti-Fascist and his convictions led him to participate in the general strike at the beginning of March 1944, which had been called in Prato and other Italian cities. The result of such a strike was that numerous arrests took place across Italy. Diego Biagini was arrested on 7 March 1944. He had been employed as department manager of the woollen cloth weaving works at the Ettore Lucchesi factory and was a true expert in this kind of production.

When their husband and father did not return home, his family, who had previously been evacuated to Calenzano (Florence), set out for the city but were unable to learn anything of his fate. Later all they were able to find out was that he had ‘set off in a train full of people’. It was a family (with four children) tested to the limit, whose house was completely destroyed that same day following an Allied air raid.

A few months later, in a letter dated 13 June 1944 sent in the name of the head of the Security Police, Florence Office, the National Socialists wrote to Diego’s wife Natalina Biagini: ‘I regret to inform you that your husband, Diego Biagini, born 19 March 1894 in Prato, died on 8 April 1944 at his workplace in Germany as a result of enemy action. This letter also constitutes a death certificate with regard to the Italian authorities.’

While Biagini did indeed die on that date, not even one month after his arrival, in the infirmary camp at Mauthausen, that this was the result of ‘enemy action’ can be ruled out. Rather it was result of the terrible conditions and everyday violence in the camp.

After the murder of Gino Gelli in the sealed trucks that took the deportees to Mauthausen, Diego Biagini was the first of the group from Prato to die in the camp, and his family was the only one to receive official notification of his death.

His son Giancarlo, who was thirteen years old when his father was arrested, is currently the president of the Prato section of the Associazione nazionale ex deportati nei campi nazisti (ANED).

Camilla Brunelli

Museo della Deportazione e Resistenza, Prato

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

Sources:

The Biagini family.

References:

Camilla Brunelli (ed.): Fondazione Museo e Centro di documentazione della Deportazione e Resistenza [Museum Catalogue] (Prato 2010).

Giovanna D’Amico / Giovanni Villari / Francesco Cassata (ed.): Il libro dei deportati. I deportati politici 1943–1945 [The Book of Deportees. Political deportees 1943–1945], vol. I (Milan 2009), research led by Brunello Mantelli, Nicola Tranfaglia, sponsored by ANED.

 

Michele Di Sabato: Il sacrificio di Prato sull’ara del Terzo Reich [The Sacrifice of Prato on the Altar of the Third Reich] (Livorno 1987).

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