Roberto Lepetit 1906 - 1945

Born 29.8.1906 in Lezza
Died 4.5.1945 in Ebensee

Biography

Roberto Lepetit was a well-known Milanese businessman, the owner of the Lepetit chemical and pharmaceutical company. As an anti-Fascist, after the Italian armistice he was part of the circle around the Partito d’Azione (Action Party) and organised a personal solidarity network to help Jews, former internees and those persecuted on political grounds. In this context he financed the National Liberation Committee, delivered medicines produced by his company to it and organised secret meetings at his offices. His involvement in underground activities was strengthened through working together with an officer sent by the Badoglio government’s military intelligence service. This officer had come to northern Italy to gather and report on strategically important information regarding the logistics of the German occupying administration.

On 29 September 1944, Lepetit was arrested by the SS and held prisoner at the San Vittore jail in Milan. There are still unanswered questions surrounding his arrest and the failure of attempts to rescue him.

On 17 October, Lepetit was interned at the Bolzano concentration camp, where, in conjunction with his Milan contacts, he was able to develop considerable underground activities and establish a pharmacy in the camp. He was deported to Mauthausen on 18 November 1944 and arrived there on 21 November (transport no. 104, prisoner number 110300). Here he was deployed as a forced labourer, which took its toll on his health. After having been transferred to the Melk subcamp on 6 December, Lepetit was then moved on to Ebensee on 13 April 1945 and died there on 4 May 1945. He left behind his widow, Hilda, and two young sons, Emilio and Guido, who commissioned the memorial by the architect Giò Ponti that today stands in Ebensee.

After Hilda learned of her husband’s death, she diligently began to collect documents and witness statements in order to get to the bottom of the events that had led to Roberto’s death. This material, together with other written and oral sources about the life and activities of the Milanese businessman, form the basis for a biography that shines a light on this figure of a great, unrecognised industrialist. The picture it creates is of a piece of gripping industrial, social and political history, and the memory of a ‘civic hero’ and friend to humanity, who put idealism before the interests of his own business and family.

Susanna Sala Massari

 

ANED

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

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