Gracco Spaziani 1884 - 1945

Born 18.5.1884 in Lonigo
Died 9.2.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Gracco Spaziani completed secondary schooling in the classical humanities in Verona and acquired a degree in law from the University of Bologna. From 1909 to 1919 he worked as a municipal clerk in Correzzo (Verona) and until 1923 in Casteldario (Mantua). He fell in love with a farmer’s daughter, Giuseppina Sardini and married her, and together they had four daughters and a son.

His passion for politics led him to join the Socialist Party at a very young age, in 1913. During the First World War he risked a charge of undermining the war effort before a military court: he had been the only person to rebel against the murder of a soldier who was sentenced to death for returning back late from leave and forced to march through the town beside his own coffin.

From the beginning he declared his opposition to the rise of Mussolini. The Fascist troops, who were also active in Casteldario, systematically threatened and opposed him until following Mussolini’s victory, in December 1923, he was fired from his job. He returned to his father’s home town of Isola della Scala, where he set up a legal practice and pursued his career in accordance with his ideals. In these difficult years of financial hardship he defended many common people free of charge, since these were the only people who came to him on account of his well-known political ideas; apart from general esteem, this only earned him a few groceries.

In 1926 he experienced his first ‘preventative detention’: three days’ imprisonment because Mussolini was making a visit to the Verona region. Another arrest followed in 1930: the police seized ‘subversive underground publications’, among them Idee sociologiche e politiche di Dante, Nietzsche e Tolstoj (Sociological and Political Ideas by Dante, Nietzsche and Tolstoy) and Gli orrori del militarismo (The Horrors of Militarism) by Leo Tolstoy… From the prison in Verona he was transferred to Udine and, together with his brothers Leonida and Elio, was tried in a special court for involvement in the disbanded Communist Party. Due to lack of evidence he was released three months later but was entered into the Casellario Politico Centrale (central register of political opponents) and told ‘not to consort with subversives and to have absolutely no interest in politics any more.’ From this time on his apartment was constantly being searched.

A few days after the German occupation, on 26 September 1943, he and his brothers took part in a gathering of anti-Fascists in Verona in order to organise an oppositional, political-military underground movement to combat the Nazis and Fascists: this was the first seed of the resistance movement in Verona, which fell part due to arrests.

In early 1944 he united representatives of all political parties and founded the National Liberation Committee of Isola della Scala, which commanded the ‘Anita’ partisan brigade, who were in contact with the RYE military mission who, in turn, had connections to the Allied Anglo-American forces. He was involved in propaganda, arranged money and assisted Allied prisoners and the families of those persecuted. Spaziani became the ideal go-between for the entire region south of Verona. However, a denunciation led to the arrest of the entire group.

On 22 November the militia of the ‘Black Brigades’ stormed the lawyer’s house and arrested Spaziani along with his youngest son Fabio. Together with nine other members of the committee he was taken to the nearby German headquarters. He was held prisoner in Verona for some weeks, first by the ‘Black Brigades’ and later by the SS, and was subjected to interrogation and severe torture. He was then transferred to the Bolzano concentration camp, where he wrote a final letter to his family on 2 January 1945. Finally he was deported to Mauthausen, where he died on 9 February in the gas chamber, after his arm had gone gangrenous as a result of the torture. After liberation he was posthumously named First Mayor of Isola della Scala.

Massimo Valpiana / Gracco Spaziani

ANED, Verona section

 

References:

Piero Caleffi: Si fa presto a dire fame [Hungry is easy to say] (Milan 1954), p. 190.

Ortensia Spaziani: Scarpe rotte eppur bisogna andar [Broken shoes, yet we must walk] (Verona 1997 [original edition 1976]).

Massimo Valpiana: Gracco Spaziani, http://lists.peacelink.it/nonviolenza/2006/01/msg00041.html, accessed on 1.3.2016.

Maurizio Zangarini: Storia della Resistenza veronese [History of the Veronese Resistance] (Caselle di Sommacampagna [Verona] 2012).

 

Various authors: Le periferie della memoria, Anppia – Movimento Nonviolento [The Edge of Memory, Anppia – nonviolent movement] (Turin, Verona 1999).

Translation into English: Joanna White

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