Vittorio Foa

Vittorio Foa (right) with Carlo Azeglio Ciampi , January 31, 2001

Vittorio Foa (born September 18, 1910 in Turin , † October 20, 2008 in Formia ) was an Italian politician .

Life

He was born into a Piedmontese petty-bourgeois family of Jewish origin. His paternal grandfather was a rabbi . Vittorio Foa and his family, however, were deeply assimilated .

During his banking apprenticeship, he became enthusiastic about the political views of Giovanni Giolitti . In 1930 he became an officer in the Italian army in the regiment of his friend Umberto of Savoy , the Italian crown prince. From 1931 to 1933 he studied in Turin jurisprudence .

In 1933 he joined the Giustizia e Libertà , an anti-fascist movement. On 15 May 1935 he was in Turin to a display of a shop steward of OVRA arrested before the tribunals speciale per la difesa dello stato tried and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for "membership in a subversive association and subversive propaganda" 1935th He shared the cell with Ernesto Rossi , Massimo Mila and Riccardo Bauer and turned in custody the liberalism of Benedetto Croce to.

After he was released from prison in Castelfranco Emilia in August 1943 , he took part in the resistance of the "fazzoletti verdi" ("green scarves"). In September 1943 he joined the Partito d'Azione (PDA) and represented it with Ugo La Malfa , Emilio Lussu , Altiero Spinelli and 1945 Oronzo Reale in the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale .

In 1945 he married Lisa Giua, the journalist Renzo Foa was one of their three children.

Political career from 1945

In the election to the Constituent Assembly on June 2, 1946, he was given a seat for the PDA. After the constitutional assembly was dissolved in 1947, he moved to the Partito Socialista Italiano , and led their parliamentary faction from 1953 to 1968. In 1948 he joined the metal workers' union Federazione Impiegati Operai Metallurgici and in October 1949 he became Deputy General Secretary Giuseppe Di Vittorio in the Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro , who he replaced in 1955.

In 1959 he worked for the magazine Passato e presente . He then contributed to the theory formation of autonomia operaia . In 1961 he sat in the editorial team of Quaderni Rossi , which were edited by Raniero Panzieri . In the Partito Socialista Italiano di Unità Proletaria founded in 1964 , Foa became general secretary. From 1966 to 1968 he worked in the editorial team of La Sinistra - L'Arcobaleno and from 1969 for Il Manifesto , where he was a member of the board until 1970.

In 1970 he left the CGIL and PSIUP and temporarily withdrew into private life.

After the PSIUP was dissolved on July 16, 1972 after an election defeat, Foa took a stake in the Nuovo PSIUP . In November 1972 he founded the Partito di Unità Proletaria with the Movimento Politico dei Lavoratori . In July 1974 the PdUP merged with the editorial team of Il manifesto and called itself PdUP per il comunismo . The PdUP ran its own list in the Democrazia Proletaria .

With Aldo Natoli and Antonio Landolfi, he pleaded for the release of Fabrizio Panzieri, who had been sentenced to eight years in prison in connection with the murder of Mikis Mantakas. In 1977 he started a diary of the Avanguardia operaia . In January 1980 he worked in the commission of the Congress of Democrazia Proletaria . He was then appointed Professor of Contemporary History at the Universities of Modena and Reggio Emilia and the University of Turin . On June 15, 1987, the PCI was elected to the Senate as an independent candidate on the list . In 1990 he voted for the Italian armed forces to participate in the Gulf War .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Stille, Benevolence and Betrayal. Five Italian Jewish Families under Fascism , New York 1991 (Summit Books), p. 95
2. ↑ Judgment No. 25 of August 3, 1935 against Vittorio Foa. In: Adriano Dal Pont, Simonetta Carolini, L'Italia dissidente e antifascista. Le ordinanze, le Sentenze istruttorie e le Sentenze in Camera di consiglio emesse dal Tribunale speciale fascista contro gli imputati di antifascismo dall'anno 1927 al 1943 , Milano 1980 (ANPPIA / La Pietra), vol. II, pp. 845-846.
3. ↑ La Stampa , March 24, 2005, Foa: "No, Fassino nessuna apertura alla linea di Bush" ( Memento of the original from May 12, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.