Guido Buffarini-Guidi

Guido Buffarini-Guidi (born August 17, 1895 in Pisa , † July 10, 1945 in Milan ) was a lawyer , politician and interior minister of the Italian Social Republic .

Life

When Italy entered the war in World War I , he volunteered in an artillery regiment. In 1917 he was promoted to captain and remained an active member of the Italian army until 1923 . In addition, he completed a law degree at the University of Pisa in March 1920 . He left the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, became active in fascist circles and joined the PNF . In November 1920 he was accepted into the Masonic Lodge "Charles Darwin" in Pisa. In April 1923, a few months after the March on Rome , he became mayor of Pisa. From 1924 he was local party leader of the PNF.

From May 1933 to February 1943 he succeeded Leandro Arpinati as Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of the Interior . When the race laws were promulgated in 1938, he took an anti-Semitic stance, in contrast to other leading fascists such as Balbo , De Bono and Federzoni . On July 25, 1943, he voted against Dino Grandi's motion to dismiss Mussolini . As a reward for this he was appointed Minister of the Interior in the fascist remnant of the Italian Social Republic.

On November 30, 1943, he ordered the arrest and delivery of over 9,000 Jews to Italian concentration camps , including the Fossoli transit camp . His original goal had been to concentrate the Jews residing in Italy on Italian soil and thus save them further deportations. However, this proved to be a failure. Most of the Italian and foreign Jews were handed over from the Italian concentration camps to the German occupiers by December 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp .

On February 21, 1945, he was suddenly dismissed by Mussolini, who in conversation with an Italian diplomat described him as a talented technician, but a hated personality. After his release, Buffarini went to the area around Gargnano , where he spent the last months of the war. On April 25, in Como, he made an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the Duce to flee to Switzerland. Together with Minister Angelo Tarchi, he tried to reach the Swiss border, but was picked up by the police near Porlezza . He was of an extraordinary jury trial on May 29, 1945 sentenced to death , and after an unsuccessful attempt at suicide with barbiturates , along with the pilot Giovanni Folchi, on the sports field "Giuriati" Città Studi in Milan on July 10, 1945 shot .

In 1970 his son Glauco published the book La vera verità: I documenti dell'archivio segreto del ministro degli interni Guido Buffarini Guidi dal 1938 al 1945 . The book describes his father's life, using information from the family archive.

literature

• BUFFARINI GUIDI, Guido. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 14:  Branchi-Buffetti. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1972.