Alfonso Ogliaro 1897 - 1945

Born 30.5.1897 in Biella
Died 20.2.1945 in Gusen

Biography

Alfonso Ogliaro was born on 30 May 1897 into a working-class family in Biella. He and his sister Vittoria were orphaned at a young age. He worked in several jobs (labourer, builder, carpenter) and this direct experience made him familiar with the world of work and its political organisations (Partito Socialista) and unions (Confederazione Generale del Lavoro, CGdL). At the CGdL he took particular interest in the lumberjacks. At the same time he began to write pieces for Corriere Biellese and was a correspondent for Avanti. At the age of 22 he was elected a town councillor for Biella. Later he moved to Turin, where he was nominated to the board of the regional union of construction workers.

With the onset of Fascism he maintained his contacts and connections with representatives of the socialist circles and the underground opposition, both in Turin (where he was living) and in Biella and Novara, as well as with those exiled in Switzerland.

It was a risky enterprise, proof that he consistently upheld democracy and a society in which all were equal before the law. Between 1940 and 1941, the meetings between the various movements within Turin socialism and the representatives of other parties, who were to establish the Concentrazione antifascista (Antifascist Concentration) and later the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (National Liberation Committee), were often held in his apartment, which was furnished with a back door.

In the meantime he worked as a sales rep for construction materials before setting up his own construction company. After 25 July 1943 he joined the re-established leadership of the Socialist Party; in September, he and Luigi Passoni represented the party at several meetings held with representatives of the other parties to establish the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale Regionale del Piemonte (Piedmont Regional Branch of the National Liberation Committee, CLNRP).

His extensive involvement in underground activities in the city (until January 1944 at least, he did not support the creation of armed groups in the mountains) was discovered by the Fascist police and the Gestapo and led to a string of arrests of the leading members of the CLNRP between January and March. Also as a consequence of the repressive measures against the participants and organisers of the March 1944 strikes (Ogliaro among them), he was arrested on 9 March in Turin together with his secretary Nuccia Adamo. He and his Socialist Party comrade, Filippo Acciarini, are then transferred to Milan and imprisoned in the San Vittore jail. On 25 April 1944 he was taken to the Fossoli transit camp and, on 21 June 1944, transported to Mauthausen along with 475 other deportees. He was registered there on 24 June under prisoner number 76483, category ‘Schutzhaft’ (‘protective custody’), stated profession: industrialist. He was transferred to the Großraming subcamp, then to the ‘Schlier’ Redl-Zipf subcamp and then on to the Gusen subcamp. He died there on 20 February 1945.

Lucio Monaco

ANED, Turin section

 

References:

The news of Ogliaro’s death reached Italy via the Turin edition of Avanti! (F. Repaci and V. Luisetti: Acciarini e Gliaro morti a Mauthausen, 7 July 1945). Alfonso Ogliaro is remembered in Ferruccio Maruffi: Fermo posta Paradios (Ramolfo [CN] 2002), pp. 140–142 (with reference to press releases). See also Mario Giovana: La Resistenza in Piemonte. Storia del C.L.N. regionale [The Resistance in Piedmont. History of the regional CLN] (Milan, Feltrinelli, 1962), ad indicem.

Translation into English: Joanna White

Location In room