27.1  
Journals link Search link Partners link Information link
Fall, 2007
Previous
Next
Journal of American Ethnic History

Table of Contents
List journal issues
Home
Get a printer-friendly version of this page
 
 
 


Anti-Fascism and the Shaping of National and Ethnic Identity: Italian American Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

FRASER OTTANELLI


      ON AUGUST 20, 1937, a front-page article in the Italian American Communist weekly L'Unità Operaia, reported that one of its leaders, Nello Vergani, had been killed while fighting Fascist troops in Spain.1 Vergani, whose real name was Mafaldo Rossi, was born and raised in Molinella, a town near Bologna well-known for its tradition of militant rural labor activism, where his political activities had earned him the designation by Italian police of "Communist terrorist,"2 as well as several beatings from Fascist Blackshirts. In 1924, Rossi emigrated and Fascist police traced his movements from France to Germany, Brazil, Algeria, and, eventually, North America. In 1926, arrested while trying to cross illegally from Canada into the United States, Rossi jumped bail and settled in New York.3 Although he adopted several aliases to conceal his identity, Rossi remained under surveillance by Italian authorities from virtually the moment he arrived in the United States. By June 1927 the Italian consulate in New York had reported to Rome that Rossi was one of the most active, visible, and "dangerous" Communists within the Italian American community. He soon became one of the leaders of the Alleanza Antifascista del Nord America (Antifascist Alliance of North America, or AFANA). After its dissolution, Rossi headed the Italian-language bureau of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and served as business manager and editor of L'Unità Operaia, as well as of the Italian bulletin of the United Shoe and Leather Workers Union.4 1
      For Rossi, as for many other men and women from around the world, the Spanish Civil War became the symbol of the global fight against exploitation, oppression, and racism. Beginning with the Spanish Army's rebellion against the democratically elected center-left Popular Front government in the summer of 1936, the conflict was quickly internationalized when General Francisco Franco received material support from Hitler and Mussolini. As Franco's troops advanced through the Spanish countryside, the slogan "Madrid will be the tomb of fascism" embodied the certainty that events in Spain foreshadowed the global defeat of Fascism and Nazism. Eventually, together with 2,800 volunteers from the United States, Rossi joined 35,000 men and women from over fifty countries in the fight to defend the Spanish Republic. Rossi was only thirty-five years of age when he was killed by enemy artillery while leading an advance.5 In honoring him, the editorial in L'Unità Operaia stated emphatically, "we promise to fight to the end to ensure that liberty will prevail not only in Spain but ... also in Italy."6 2
      Since the early 1960s, historians of international labor migration have examined the relationship between the experiences of migrants with the histories of their countries of origin and of adoption.7 In recent studies focusing on migration from Central America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, social scientists have developed a "transnational" terminology and analytical framework to identify the complex social relations that link together sending and receiving countries.8 In addition, they have described transnational politics as a process directed at bringing about change in, or fostering support for, the migrants' country of origin among its citizens living abroad.9 Building on these historical approaches and organizing concepts, as well as drawing from material on both sides of the Atlantic, this article studies the almost 300 Italian Americans who volunteered to fight for the Spanish Republic. Although they represent a small portion of the Italian American Left, individual decisions to become a "volunteer for liberty"10 originated from the interaction between an ideological commitment to internationalist ideology—which generated activities, social networks, and a worldview that transcended the boundaries of the nation-state—with personal experiences as migrant and ethnic workers. Consequently, a microhistory based on the collective analysis of the characteristics and political practices of this group of Italian Americans provides a useful vantage point from which to explore the relationship between internationalism (in the form of opposition to Fascism as a global threat to workers' rights) and the definition of national and ethnic identities among class-conscious ethnic workers in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s.11 In other words, the stories of Rossi and his comrades stand for what historian Edoardo Grendi called, in his study of the relationship between micro and social history, "the exceptional normal."12

 3
      Existing historiography does little to explain the combination of factors that propelled migrant workers to fight in Spain. Based on an array of sources, which include records in the archives of the International Brigades in Moscow, historian Rémi Skoutelsky argued that the principal motivation behind the decision to fight Fascism in Spain was a feeling of solidarity and moral obligation. According to Skoutelsky, for French volunteers (the largest group in the International Brigades) this "commonality of interests" operated on two levels. On the one hand, it was based on working-class internationalism, and on the other hand, it expressed the resolve to prevent the spread of Fascism to France. Volunteers from other countries shared this duality of motivation. A British member of the International Brigades explained in a letter to his daughter that he was fighting in Spain "to protect you and all the children in England as well as people all over the world."13 4
      Founded on the intersection of internationalism and nationalism, this "commonality of interests" is hard to apply to a majority of Polish, Italian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Yugoslav, and even Cuban and Chinese volunteers, most of whom had emigrated before going to Spain. Just like the multitude of activists who left their countries of birth starting in the early nineteenth century, this new wave of class-conscious workers migrated for economic and political reasons, and in the case of Jews because of religious persecution. Like those who had preceded them, they also faced the challenge of negotiating the relationship with working-class organizations in their countries of adoption and of defining their cultural identities and national loyalties.14 For the most part they headed for France, but they also went to Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, several Latin American countries, and the United States and Canada. Within these multiethnic countries an immigrant élite politisée acted as "radical ethnic brokers"15 between foreign-born workers and national working-class organizations that, in turn, defined the forms of immigrant incorporation into these nations as workers and as citizens.16 In France, for instance, building on multinational labor-organizing practices pioneered in the earlier years of the century, a significant part of the Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Jewish working class integrated into local society through the French Communist Party and the Confédération Générale du Travail. Within these organizations, migrants reconciled ethnic and national identities through support of the republican and democratic values of the French Revolution.17 5
      In the United States, by contrast, the process of incorporation was complicated by the hostility of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) to socialism and immigrant unskilled labor along with the indifference of the national leadership of the Socialist Party toward mobile noncitizen workers in the period before World War I. This situation left the majority of immigrant workers outside of mainstream working-class organizations and forced them to confront exploitation in the workplace and xenophobia in the broader society by forming separate, ethnic-based unions and political organizations or by joining the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World.18 During this period, however, immigrant radicals did not confine activities to their ethnic enclaves. Instead, they created a transnational community that enabled them to fight simultaneously against oppression in the United States as well as in their country of origin. According to prevailing historiography, this duality came to an end during the interwar years: the passing of the first wave of radical immigrants and the rise of a new cohort of radicals who joined "American" working-class organizations supposedly directed class-conscious ethnic workers toward exclusive emphasis on U.S. domestic issues, leading to the "end of the road" of independent radical ethnic organizations.19 6
      For Italian Americans who would eventually volunteer to fight in Spain, factors such as year of birth, length of stay abroad, occupation, family structure, and differences in their socialization in the communities in which they settled shaped their political involvement in the country of adoption and determined the different forms of their relationship with Italy. In terms of age and political experience, only three volunteers were under twenty-one when they arrived in Spain, and only a few more had political experience that pre-dated World War I.20 In fact, the average age of Italian American volunteers was thirty-five, their formative political experiences had been the postwar labor upsurge, the rise and consolidation of Fascism in Italy, the Sacco and Vanzetti defense, the Great Depression, and the rise of Nazism in Germany. Clearly, then, for a majority of Italian American volunteers the decision to risk their lives in a foreign land was neither a sign of restless youthful ardor nor the last hurrah of aging radicals. Rather, it was a serious step that reflected personal and political experiences and maturation over time. 7
      To illustrate the role of politics in creating distinct cultural identities, it is useful to classify Italian American volunteers into two generations defined not in biological terms but by whether their formative political experience had taken place in Italy or in the United States.21 Both generations shared a commitment to defeat Fascism in Italy and around the world. For the members of the first group, however, anti-Fascism served to assert their Italian identity, while for the members of the second it became part of their broader U.S. identity. To paraphrase the French historian Jean Marie Guillon, the first were "refugees waiting to return"22 to Italy, whereas the second were ethnics already incorporated into U.S. society. Three-fourths of the Italian Americans who fought in Spain had emigrated from their country of birth as adults. A look at social background, place of birth, and year of emigration, combined with individual life stories, reveals notable biographical information about this group. Prior to emigration almost half were industrial wage earners (miners, factory workers, stonecutters, construction workers, and maritime workers) and slightly over one-fourth were artisans and shopkeepers (shoemakers, barbers, mechanics, carpenters, blacksmiths, and broadly defined merchants). The remainder included generally defined service workers (waiters, clerks, cooks, white-collar workers, and teamsters) and professionals and intellectuals (doctors, students, and full-time political and labor organizers). Finally, less than 6 percent had worked the land either as agricultural wage earners, sharecroppers, tenant farmers, or farmers. 8
      Most had become politically active in their teens in the midst of Italy's charged and violent postwar years. In terms of political affiliation, 60 percent of these volunteers were Communists, followed by almost 20 percent who were anarchists, 13 percent generic anti-Fascists, and a handful of Republicans, Socialists, and members of the liberal-socialist organization Giustizia e Libertà. The preponderance of Communists was the result of the party's role as the Left's most dynamic organization and for its ties with the victorious Bolshevik Revolution. Nonetheless, the significant percentage of anarchists indicates the continued influence of the libertarian movement on Italians both in Italy and the United States. 9
      While still in Italy, many had attempted to stem the violent Fascist offensive in their native regions. Emilio Dal Col, for instance, was a member of the Arditi del Popolo (a paramilitary organization composed of rank-and-file anarchists, Communists and Socialists to resist Fascist attacks against working-class organizations and activists), while Vittorio Strukel took part in the confrontations that marked the rise of Fascism in Trieste.23 Anarchists Pietro Fusari and Giuseppe Esposito were in their mid-twenties when Italian authorities began to track their activities. Specifically, the police suspected that Fusari provided weapons to workers during the sit-down strikes that swept Italy's industrial heartland in September 1920. A year later he was arrested but subsequently released for lack of evidence following the anarchist bombing in Milan.24 Esposito's police records state that he had proven himself a "dangerous antifascist" who was "capable of violent and uncontrolled actions" and was consequently arrested and sentenced for "crimes against property and individuals."25 10
      For those who had left Italy as adults, there was a direct relationship between level of political activity, place of origin in Italy, and the decision to emigrate. In almost exactly the inverse of the general pattern of migration from Italy to the United States, over 80 percent of this group of Italians came from the northern and central regions of the country, the remainder from the Mezzogiorno (south of Rome, including the islands of Sicily and Sardinia). They originated from areas of the peninsula where Fascist violence had been the fiercest and where left-wing or simply anti-Fascist views placed people in physical danger and jeopardized their ability to make a living. Police officials unabashedly reported how several of the men who would later volunteer to fight in Spain were repeatedly attacked and beaten by Fascist squadristi and in at least one case had been forced to drink castor oil, a ritual applied by Fascists to humiliate their enemies.26 Eventually, in the words of Giovanni Menella from Torre del Greco near Naples, Fascism had made things "a little too hot for them," forcing many anti-Fascists to emigrate.27 11
      More than one-fifth of those who arrived in the interwar years entered the United States illegally. This was not unusual since, in order to circumvent discriminatory U.S. immigration law and Fascist restrictions, multitudes of Italian radicals enlisted on Italian merchant vessels, often with the help of sympathetic seamen, and then jumped ship once they reached a U.S. port.28 Fleeing repression in Italy, anti-Fascists did not find reprieve on the other side of the Atlantic. Italian officials devoted significant resources to the surveillance and repression of anti-Fascists abroad whom they feared as a source of destabilization at home. In the United States the combination of continued surveillance by Fascist police and the pervasive nativist and anti-radical sentiment of local, state, and federal authorities meant that those anti-Fascists who resumed political and labor activity did so at great risk. 12
      In order to assert the influence of his regime over the Italian American community, Mussolini ordered the creation of a secret Ufficio riservato (Office of covert activities) within the New York consulate in 1926. Umberto Caradossi, a member of the Fascist secret police (OVRA), acting under diplomatic cover as vice-consul, headed the Ufficio riservato from its inception until the summer of 1941, when Italian diplomatic offices in the United States were ordered closed. Caradossi conducted investigations and oversaw an extensive network of informants in the Italian community and within anti-Fascist organizations. Intelligence on the activities of opponents of the regime was evaluated and sent by diplomatic pouch to police authorities of the Ministry of the Interior in Rome.29 By the end of the 1930s Italian police authorities had assembled files on as many as 6,000 Italian Americans who had been classified as "affiliated to subversive parties considered dangerous to public order and security."30 13
      As soon as Italian Americans were identified as anti-Fascists, their friends and relatives in Italy frequently were intimidated, were threatened with job loss, and had their homes searched. In several instances close family members of opponents of the regime, including wives and children, were denied passports to the United States.31 Italian consular officials also exchanged information on Italian American radicals with U.S. local, state, and federal authorities as well as with local nativist and anti-radical organizations, all of which then conspired to intimidate opponents of the regime. Italian radicals who entered the United States illegally were particularly vulnerable. Their status as "deserters" in Italy (which in some cases led to sentences in absentia of up to five years in jail) and as illegal immigrants in the United States placed them in a precarious situation. On specific orders from Mussolini, the Italian consulate in New York routinely provided U.S. immigration officials with the names and whereabouts of politically active illegal immigrants who then, in several cases, were arrested and deported back to Italy.32 14
      Due to the risks involved and the simple priorities of economic survival, most anti-Fascist immigrants in the United States eschewed overt political activity and tried to blend inconspicuously into a familiar and supportive ethnic radical community, in some cases taking new names. While they often changed residence to avoid detection by police, a majority of Italian American radicals settled in the New York City area, although there were also significant numbers in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Detroit, San Francisco, and Cleveland. Some secured work as seamen, autoworkers, and miners, but most took menial jobs as day laborers and construction workers or as waiters and cooks in Italian restaurants. The efforts to conceal their identities were often successful. As a consular official explained to authorities in Rome, "subversives in America have become quite suspicious since they are certainly aware of the investigations and surveillance on the part of the consulates and it has become extremely difficult to obtain information in their regard."33 15
      In spite of the real threat of serious reprisals, some anti-Fascist immigrants, like the Communist leader Mafaldo Rossi and the anarcho-syndicalist Erasmo Abate, engaged in varying degrees of political activity. Abate's activities in support of Sacco and Vanzetti resulted in his deportation back to Italy in 1922. Four years later he illegally crossed the Canadian border back into the United States and adopted the pseudonym "Hugo Rolland," the name by which he would be known for the rest of his life. With this new identity, Abate founded and edited the Italian-language anarchist monthly Germinal, published in Chicago.34 Italian authorities promptly notified U.S. officials of Abate's and Rossi's status as illegal immigrants, but in neither case were the police able to arrest them. A consular official in New York reported that once Rossi learned that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, he "made himself scarce" and evaded two attempts to apprehend him. While Rossi remained a prominent anti-Fascist spokesperson, he was forced to lead a semi-clandestine existence, spending his days in the relative sanctuary of Communist Party headquarters on Twelfth Street in Manhattan and covering his traces when he left the building in order to conceal his residence from Italian authorities and New York City police.35 16
      In the United States the political activities of anti-Fascist immigrants varied. A few recent arrivals joined specifically Italian political groups. These included the New York City branch of the Italian Republican Party and various Italian-language anarchist groups linked to publications such as Germinal and Il Martello. Some also joined the followers of the anti-organizational Italian anarchist leader Luigi Galleani, meeting at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third Street or at the "circolo anarchico" on East Second Street.36 In contrast, the majority of politically active anti-Fascist immigrants joined ethnically based organizations in decidedly "American" radical political parties. These groups included the Italian Federation of the Socialist Party of the United States and more commonly one of the language branches of the CPUSA, such as the Italian Workers' Club in Brooklyn and the Italian Workers' Center, L'Unità, in Manhattan. In addition, over sixty volunteers belonged to the Garibaldi Lodge, the Italian branch of the Communist-led mutual aid society, the International Workers Order (IWO).37 17
      Anti-Fascist immigrants joined unions that reflected the limited occupations available to them. Here, too, most avoided leadership roles that would attract attention,38 but there were some exceptions. According to Italian police authorities, Francesco Coco, a barber by trade, had no record of political involvement before emigration. This was either a case of poor police investigation or an indication of Coco's ability to conceal his activities in Italy, where he had first been a member of the Socialist Party and then one of the charter members of the Communist Party in 1921. Soon after his arrival in the United States, he was a central figure in the 1926 Communist-led textile workers strike in Passaic, New Jersey, during which he was arrested and fined for resisting arrest. The following year he helped found the short-lived Italian-language weekly Lotta di Classe, which served as the organ of the pro-Communist wing in the needle trades union. Together with Ubaldo Cazzoli (a.k.a. Giulio Fantini) of the restaurant workers union, Coco was appointed to the Italian National Bureau of the Communist Party of the United States, where he helped unionize Italian workers.39 18
      These "refugees waiting to return" to their homeland contrast sharply in background and outlook with Italian American radicals who had come of age in the United States. While slightly more than half of this second group was born in Italy, all of them had been raised in the United States and, with few exceptions, they spoke Italian poorly if at all. In several cases Italian experiences, filtered through family traditions, shaped the radicalism of those raised in the United States. Maria Tossa from Springfield, Massachusetts, was extremely supportive of her son's decision to join the International Brigades. "I, too, would be happy if I could be next to you taking aim without missing a shot at the criminal, monstrous and lousy fascists," she wrote to him in Spain. "Do your duty as a free young man and I will do mine as an old rebel.... I adore you together with all my other good sons who are risking your lives so that the monster may die."40 As a child, Italian-born Giuseppe Dalleo donned a red shirt when accompanying his father to Socialist demonstrations in Catania, while Carlo Marzani witnessed several episodes of Fascist violence in his native Rome before his Socialist father moved the family to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the mid-1920s.41 19
      Unlike their comrades whose formative experiences had taken place in Italy, many anti-Fascists born or reared in the United States held jobs in basic industries such as maritime, steel, auto, and electrical, and most were openly involved in radical and labor activities of the 1920s and 1930s.42 As a result, they generally did not belong to ethnic organizations (including groups or language locals affiliated with "American" parties), but rather they pursued full assimilation into U.S. society and expressed their political radicalism and labor activism by joining multi-ethnic labor unions and political parties. Italian American volunteers raised in the United States included 17 percent who were anarchists, while members of the Socialist Party of America combined with generic anti-Fascists accounted for another ten percent. Once again, Communists were the largest group, but in a significantly higher percentage than among anti-Fascists raised in Italy (73 as opposed to 60 percent). 20
      Several specific factors account for the Communist Party's appeal among radicals reared in the United States. Eager for involvement, they were drawn to the party because of its militancy and self-assurance. In addition, many among this new wave of ethnic radicals saw party membership as a way to affirm their "American" identity, a means through which they could transcend their parents' insular immigrant neighborhoods and become part of an extended community composed of the wide range of ethnic and racial groups that made up U.S. society. This new generation of Communists was the backbone of the party's Popular Front policies when it helped build new industrial unions, endorsed Roosevelt's New Deal policies, and promoted anti-Fascist unity in defense of democratic institutions. The CPUSA's search for policies, language, and organizational forms that reflected the country's circumstances also led it to embrace elements in the "bourgeois" tradition of the United States. At their functions, Communists now sang the "Star Spangled Banner," along with the more customary "International," while the new preamble to the party's constitution stated that the CPUSA carried "forward today the traditions of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson, and Lincoln, and of the Declaration of Independence." The claim of continuity between the country's democratic foundations and the Communist program culminated in the slogan "Communism is the Americanism of the twentieth century" and indicated the party's concern with overcoming its image as a "foreign" organization. The party's emphasis on "Americanization" encouraged children of immigrants to explore the country's traditions, culture, and institutions and, in the process, to sink roots even deeper into the nation's soil.43 21
      Regardless of whether their formative political experiences had taken place in Italy or in the United States, both groups strengthened the ranks of the older generation of radical Italians who had migrated before World War I and who provided a vital base for anti-Fascist activities during the 1920s and 1930s. By exposing the repressive, brutal, and expansionist nature of Fascism, thousands of Italian Americans engaged in a struggle to help eradicate the Mussolini regime in Italy; oppose its influence within the Italian ethnic community; and, finally, prevent the spread of Fascism to the United States. 22
      Italian left-wingers faced major obstacles. Common hatred of Mussolini and his supporters was not enough to unify a traditionally faction-ridden Italian American Left. In April 1923, various anti-Fascist organizations and personalities joined forces to found the Antifascist Alliance of North America (AFANA), hoping to rouse public opposition to the Fascist terror in Italy as well as to warn about the threat of the spread of the movement to the United States. By 1926 the sectarian wars that had split the Left in the United States and torn apart the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW), and the United Mine Workers (UMW) spilled over into the Italian American radical movement and caused the breakup of AFANA. The consequent fragmentation of Italian radicalism prevented the establishment of any unified organizational challenge to Fascism. Italian American anti-Fascists found common ground only in the campaign against the Fascist League of North America (FLNA), founded in 1925, and their opposition contributed to its eventual dissolution four years later.44 23
      Rather than eradicating support for Italian Fascism, however, the dissolution of the FLNA led to a shift in pro-Fascist activities in the United States. During the interwar years, as we have seen, the Italian government engaged in repressive activities with the acquiescence and even the active support of U.S. government agencies. These political practices recast the relationship between emigrants and the mother country, establishing a new and broader definition of Italian identity that was no longer confined to those living within the borders of the nation-state but instead encompassed all who originated in Italy. The objective of the Fascist government was to exert control over the large Italian ethnic community and use its electoral strength to influence U.S. policies in the interest of the regime.45 Consequently, by the early 1930s, Italian Fascist authorities turned away from attempting to enlist Italian Americans into openly Fascist organizations and instead fashioned a less political characterization of Italian identity. Effectively adopting the language and the symbolism of patriotism, Fascist propaganda now associated love of homeland with support for Mussolini, implying that all "true" Italians were Fascists and that to attack the regime was "un-Italian." Simultaneously, the Fascist regime underscored the bond between its construction of italianità (Italian identity) and the dominant conservative designation of "Americanism," thereby promoting a definition of Italian American identity that was palatable to U.S. authorities.46 24
      In their struggle against Mussolini and his supporters, Italian American anti-Fascists actively challenged Fascist propaganda in a variety of ways. Italian police files indicate that a common practice among opponents of Mussolini was to mail anti-Fascist literature to family and friends in Italy. Alfonso Mellina also collected money within the Italian American community for a new casa del popolo (workers' club) in his native town of Curino in the province of Vercelli to replace the one that had been destroyed by the squadristi and which he planned to help rebuild following what he expected to be the inevitable fall of Fascism.47 Others took on a more public posture by writing articles for anti-Fascist newspapers, helping raise money to help anti-Fascist causes, and participating in Italian-language and multi-ethnic anti-Fascist organizations such as the pro-Communist American League Against War and Fascism.48 Furthermore, several of those who would later volunteer to fight in Spain took part in protests against visiting Italian Fascist dignitaries as well as in many of the bloody confrontations against Fascists in Little Italys across the country that left scores injured or killed on both sides.49 Finally, first- and second-generation Italian American anti-Fascists were in the forefront of interracial demonstrations in Harlem to protest Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia.50

 25
      Italian Americans were among the first foreign volunteers to fight in Spain. Several crossed the Atlantic on their own initiative shortly after the beginning of the military uprising.51 In September 1936, with ample evidence of the direct involvement of Hitler and Mussolini on the side of Franco, the Soviet Union began to provide military assistance to the Republican government and to promote the creation of the International Brigades. With directives from Moscow, the CPUSA began its own recruiting drive in the fall of 1936. Although it controlled recruitment and screened volunteers, the party's broad alliance policies of the Popular Front did not restrict enlistment to Communists but strongly encouraged the participation of generic left wingers and anti-Fascists.52 The first organized group of eighty-six volunteers from the United States, which included at least six Italian Americans, sailed from New York on the French liner Normandie the day after Christmas 1936. 26
      After January 1937, when the U.S. Congress banned travel to Spain, volunteers had to find ways to circumvent the law. For legal immigrants or citizens this usually involved applying for U.S. passports by concealing their ultimate destination. Illegal immigrants had to use other strategies to get to Spain. Several Italian Americans enlisted on merchant vessels and then jumped ship in European ports or used forged papers to obtain a U.S. passport. But most were issued a Spanish passport by the Republican consulate in New York.53 Despite these efforts to deceive authorities, Umberto Caradossi, the Fascist police officer stationed in New York, used his network of informants within radical Italian ethnic organizations and an infiltrator in the Spanish diplomatic office to learn the real identity of many Italian American volunteers, and this information was dutifully recorded in each individual's police file.54 27
      Upon disembarking at Le Havre, the volunteers commonly went to Paris. After a stay that varied in length, they headed for the Spanish border. At first, travel from France into Spain simply meant taking the night train from the Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris to Barcelona or the bus from Perpignan to Figueras. After March 1937, when the French government closed the border, entering Spain involved a perilous nighttime trek over the Pyrenees. Volunteers intercepted by French border patrols were jailed (in the case of one Italian American volunteer for forty days).55 The only individuals allowed to cross legally into Spain were those traveling as part of humanitarian missions. Among these was Ave Bruzzichesi, one of two Italian American women permitted to join the anti-Fascist struggle in Spain.56 Born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, in 1913 and raised in a religious Catholic family, Bruzzichesi had no history of political activism. After completing nurse's training at Newark's City Hospital in 1936, she worked for a year at Metropolitan Hospital in New York. In the spring of 1937 she heard Father Michael O'Flanagan, the Irish Republican priest and ardent socialist who was touring the United States in support of the Spanish Republic, speak at the Hippodrome in New York. O'Flanagan's Christian egalitarianism and ardent anti-Fascism made him an articulate advocate of the Spanish cause, and his call for volunteers for medical aid to Spain influenced Bruzzichesi's decision to join the West Coast Medical Unit led by Dr. Leo Eloesser, professor of surgery at Stanford University Medical School. Together with the rest of the American medical personnel, Bruzzichesi arrived at the border town of Port Bou shortly after it had been bombed by Fascist airplanes; within days she helped set up a 200-bed mobile hospital to receive the first wounded from the Battle of Teruel.57 28
      In Spain, international volunteers were incorporated into separate battalions divided according to nationality. Named after Communist icons or national heroes such as James Connolly, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Abraham Lincoln, these units served to overcome linguistic differences while affirming the distinctly national yet universal character of the struggle against Fascism. Italian American volunteers did not serve in the same battalion. In this respect, the choices they made underscore the distinction between "refugees waiting to return" and those already incorporated into U.S. society. Most of the volunteers who maintained strong cultural, linguistic, and political connections with Italy preferred to join the congenial and familiar surroundings of the predominantly Italian-speaking Garibaldi battalion. In contrast, those whose formative political experiences had been in the United States found their place within the English-speaking Abraham Lincoln battalion as part of a multi-ethnic and interracial "American" unit. 29
      Italian American anti-Fascists took part in every major battle of the war. Dispatched together with the other members of the International Brigades to the most dangerous parts of the front, Italian Americans in the Garibaldi and the Lincoln battalions suffered high casualty rates, with one in six killed and many wounded at least once, in many cases seriously. At the end of September 1938, the Spanish government announced that international volunteers would leave Spain in the vain hope that following this gesture, international pressure would force the repatriation of Italian and German troops on the rebel side. On October 29, the surviving members of the International Brigades assembled in Barcelona and paraded through the streets of the Catalan capital, cheered on by hundreds of thousands. Voicing a feeling shared by most other volunteers, Ave Bruzzichesi described the experience as one she would "never forget as long as I live."58 As the Internationals reached the reviewing stand, they received their final farewell from the celebrated Spanish Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri, "La Pasionaria." Her words articulated a deep sense of love and gratitude. The Internationals, she said, had given up "their loves, their countries, home and fortune, fathers, mothers, wives, brothers, sisters and children, and they came and told us: 'We are here. Your cause, Spain's cause, is ours—it is the cause of all advanced and progressive mankind.'" "You can go proudly," she told them, "You are history. You are legend." 30
      The varying paths of the surviving Italian American anti-Fascist volunteers are hard to follow once they crossed back over the Pyrenees. Heroes in Spain, in France they confronted, together with other members of the International Brigades, the harsh reality of the Western democracies' policy of appeasement. Italian American volunteers who could demonstrate they were citizens or legal residents of the United States were permitted to travel back across the Atlantic. In contrast, those who could not prove their legal status were denied reentry into the United States. Some eluded French police and stowed away on U.S.-bound ships;59 others were held at Ellis Island upon their arrival until immigration authorities could determine their fate which, in a few cases, led to their deportation to places such as Chile, Cuba, and Venezuela.60 The rest were left stranded in Europe, where they faced innumerable challenges and dangers. Most were interned in detention camps in southwest France, set up expressly for tens of thousands of Spanish Republican soldiers and the members of the International Brigades who could not return to their countries of origin. Guarded by French troops and surrounded by barbed wire, internees endured abysmal living conditions.61 The fate of most prisoners was sealed following the fall of France to Nazi Germany in June 1940. In the case of Italian anti-Fascists volunteers, the Vichy government turned them over to Mussolini's police, which imprisoned them on the Italian island of Ventotene.62 Suffering a worst fate, Alvaro Ghia, who had gone to Spain from New York, was handed over to the Nazis and deported to the concentration camp at Mauthausen.63

 31
      This collective biography of anti-Fascist volunteers shows that Italian American radicalism continued to be a lively and relevant presence in U.S. society during the interwar years. As they moved away from separate ethnic structures, it is likely that some, sickened by Mussolini's repressive regime and expansionist foreign policy, experienced a sense of "shame" for being Italian.64 Most, however, agreed with Albino Zattoni, who felt honored to have fought in the Garibaldi battalion which represented "the true Italy in Spain,"65 or with U.S.-raised Giuseppe Dalleo when he wrote, "we will fight to the last drop of blood to demonstrate to the world that the true sons of Italy have contributed to the struggle for liberty of Spain and of the entire world."66 Zattoni's and Dalleo's words, together with the other stories presented in this article, show that for class-conscious Italian Americans, whether they hoped to return to their place of origin or had incorporated into U.S. labor and radical organizations that were multi-ethnic and multi-racial, their politics continued to be informed by personal, cultural, and political ties with Italy. Through opposition to Mussolini's regime and to the spread of Fascism to other countries, they challenged the "official" image of Italians as militaristic, aggressive, and imperialist. Instead, they created an alternative definition of italianità centered on a filial relationship with a "mother" Italy as the personification of an egalitarian tradition and of the battle for universal freedom. Accordingly, anti-Fascism enabled class-conscious Italian Americans to combine cosmopolitan or internationalist ideologies—anarchist, Communist, humanist, or Socialist—with a definition of what it meant to be an Italian "patriot" or a "true" American, rooted in the redemption of their place of origin, in the defense of their country of adoption, and in the worldwide struggle against oppression. Therefore, opposition to Mussolini allowed ethnic working-class activists to engage in transnational political practices that encompassed both their countries of origin and of adoption. As it provided a bridge between dreams of proletarian revolution and the experience of migration, anti-Fascism was a central element in their process of self-definition and adjustment, either as Italians or as ethnic Americans. 32
      Significantly, the "commonality of interests," based on the connection of anti-Fascism with national and cultural identity, that prompted Italian Americans to volunteer, also motivated members of other ethnic and racial groups. While most Jewish volunteers were not religious, ethnic and cultural identity still constituted an important element of their radical politics and fueled their opposition to Fascism. Accordingly, the battlefields of Spain gave them their first opportunity to offer armed and organized resistance against both European Fascism and Nazi anti-Semitism.67 A Jewish volunteer, Hy Katz, in an attempt to mollify his mother's obvious disapproval of his decision to risk his life in faraway Spain, had this to say about his choice:
... this is a case where sons must go against their mothers' wishes for the sake of their mothers themselves. So I took up arms against the persecutors of my people—the Jews—and my class—the Oppressed. Are these traits which you admire so much in a Prophet Jeremiah or a Judas Maccabbeus bad when your son exhibits them?68
 Hy Katz's explanation of his motivations, rooted in a Jewish history of exploitation as well as in religious and racial persecution, resonates in the words of one of his African American comrades, Canute Frankson, for whom the struggle against Franco and his Fascist and Nazi allies was inseparable from the larger battle against racism and exploitation, for justice and equality, in the United States:
... why I, a Negro, who have fought through these years for the rights of my people, am here in Spain today? Because if we crush Fascism here ... [w]e will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim-crow trains, no lynchings. That is why, my dear, I am here in Spain.69
 		33
      As Robin D. G. Kelly has noted, for the nearly one-hundred African American volunteers, Spain was not just another "white man's war," but rather an extension of the battle against racism and poverty in the United States as well as of the anti-Fascist struggle of Ethiopia.70 An African American brigadista, at the time recovering from battle-inflicted wounds, simply and eloquently explained: "I wanted to go to Ethiopia and fight Mussolini." "This ain't Ethiopia, but it'll do."71 The "commonality of interests" also took other forms: the flag of the Jewish battalion was embroidered in Yiddish with the motto, "For your liberty and ours," and German volunteers sang "Today our homeland is before Madrid,"72 while Italian anti-Fascists decreed, "Today in Spain, tomorrow in Italy." For all of them the struggle against Fascism in Spain reverberated with the promise of their ultimate deliverance. 34


NOTES

I wish to thank Sam Baily, James Barrett, Giovanna Benadusi, Peter Carroll, Alejandro de la Fuente, Donna Gabaccia, Helen Graham, Franca Iacovetta, Robert P. Ingalls, Gerald Meyer, Cary Nelson, Nunzio Pernicone, Ian Radforth, Federico Romero, Ella Schmidt, Jared Toney, and Elisabetta Vezzosi, along with the participants to the Student and Faculty History Research Seminar at USF, for their insightful suggestions.

1. "Nello Vergani caduto da Eroe sul fronte di Madrid," L'Unità Operaia, August 20, 1937.

2. "Comunista attentatore."

3. On Mafaldo Rossi [a.k.a. Nello Vergani], see his obituary, "Nello Vergani vive oggi più che mai," L'Unità Operaia, September 4, 1937; and "Mafaldo Rossi," Casellario politico centrale (hereafter CPC), Ministero dell'Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Archivio centrale dello Stato, Rome (hereafter ACS), busta 4451.

4. In addition to "Nello Vergani," Rossi used the aliases "Leone Russo" and "Attilio Leoni." See "Nello Vergani," Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Tamiment Library, New York University (hereafter ALBA) Fond 545 Opis 3 File 435; and "Mafaldo Rossi" CPC busta 4451.

5. "Nello Vergani," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 508, 24–25. On Mafaldo Rossi's death see also "Mafaldo Rossi," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 1936–1939: Tre anni di storia da non dimenticare (Rome, 1996), 404; "Nello Vergani" ALBA Fond 545, Opis 3, File 453, 24–25, and Fond 545 Opis 6 File 508, 24–25; "Italiani caduti in Spagna combattendo contro il Fascismo," in Quaderni Italiani (New York, 1943), 137.

6. "Nello Vergani vive oggi più che mai," L'Unità Operaia, September 4, 1937.

7. Ernesto Ragionieri, "Italiani all'estero ed emigrazione di lavoratori italiani: un tema di storia del movimento operaio," Belfagor 17 (November 30, 1962): 640–69; Frank Thistlethwaite, "Migration from Europe Overseas in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," Rapports: XIe Congrès International des Sciences Historiques (Stockholm, 1960), 40–69, reprinted with postscript in Rudolph J. Vecoli and Suzanne M. Sinke, eds., A Century of European Migrations 1830–1930 (Urbana, IL, 1991), 17–57; David Montgomery, "Nationalism, American Patriotism, and Class Consciousness among Immigrant Workers in the United States in the Epoch of World War I," in Dirk Hoerder, ed., "Struggle a Hard Battle," Essays on Working-Class Immigrants (DeKalb, IL, 1986), 327–51; Samuel L. Baily and Franco Ramella, One Family, Two Worlds: An Italian Family's Correspondence across the Atlantic, 1901–1922 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988); Donna Rae Gabaccia, Militants and Migrants: Rural Sicilians Become American Workers (New Brunswick, NJ, 1988); Kathleen Conzen, David Gerber, Ewa Morawska, George Pozzetta, and Rudolph Vecoli, "The Invention of Ethnicity: A Perspective from the U.S.A.," Journal of American Ethnic History 12, no.1 (1992): 3–41; Ferdinando Fasce, Tra due sponde: Lavoro, affari e cultura tra Italia e Stati Uniti nell'età' della grande emigrazione (Genoa, 1993); Dirk Hoerder, "International Labor Markets and Community Building by Migrant Workers in the Atlantic Economies," in A Century of European Migrations, 78–107, and "From Migrants to Ethnics: Acculturation in a Societal Framework," in Dirk Hoerder and Leslie Moch, eds., European Migrants: Global and Local Perspectives (Boston, 1996), 211–62. For a comparative analysis of past and current migration, see Ewa Morawska, "Immigrants, Transnationalism, and Ethnicization: A Comparison of This Great Wave and the Last," in Gary Gerstle and John Mollenkopf, eds., E Pluribus Unum? Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Immigrant Political Incorporation (New York, 2001), 175–212.

8. Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton, "Towards a Definition of Transnationalism," in Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered (New York, 1992), ix–xiv; and Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA, 1994). See also Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo, eds., Transnationalism from Below (New Brunswick, NJ, 1998); and Peggy Levitt, The Transnational Villagers (Berkeley, CA, 2001).

9. See Nations Unbound, passim but particularly chapter 7; Levitt, The Transnational Villagers, 148, 157, and 202; Sarah J. Mahler, "Theoretical and Empirical Contributions toward a Research Agenda on Transnationalism," in Transnationalism from Below, 64–100. The participation of migrants in transnational political activities is also explored by several essays in a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 2 (March 1999), ed. Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt. Specifically, see Bryan R. Roberts, Reanne Frank, and Fernando Lozano-Ascencio, "Transnational Migrant Communities and Mexican Migration to the U.S.," 239–66; Patricia Landolt, Lilian Autler, and Sonia Baires, "From Hermano Lejano to Hermano Major: The Dialectics of Salvadoran Transnationalism," 290–315; Nina Glick Schiller and Georges E. Fouron, "Terrains of Blood and Nation: Haitian Transnational Social Fields," 340–66; Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and Luz Marina Diaz, "Transnational Migration: A View from Colombia," 397–421; and Alejandro Portes, "Conclusion: Towards a New World—the Origins and Effects of Transnational Activities," 463–77.

10. This is was the term commonly used to refer to the international volunteers who fought in defense of the Republic and was also the name of the multilingual publication issued for them in Spain.

11. The information on Italian American anti-Fascist volunteers is based on biographical data drawn from Italian police records of the CPC, the Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza (hereafter PS), housed at the Archivo Centrale dello Stato in Rome; the short biographies of Italian volunteers in La Spagna nel nostro cuore and I nostri volontari in Spagna (Rovigno, 1988), as well as the personnel files on U.S. volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive and the "Italian American Collection," Immigration History Research Center (hereafter IHRC), University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
      U.S. volunteers in Spain were prolific writers; surviving letters back home offer essential insight into their representation as militant women and men. Unfortunately, very few letters are available relating to the experience of Italian Americans. I suspect that a combination of uncertain immigration status along with concern for the anti-Italianism of mainstream U.S. society persuaded returning veterans and the families of those killed to destroy or conceal any documents that would link them to radical politics and to the Spanish Civil War.

12. Edoardo Grendi, "Microanalisi e storia sociale," Quaderni Storici 7(1972): 506–20.

13. Rémi Skoutelsky, L'espoir guidait leurs pas: Les volontaires français dans les Brigades internationales, 1936–1939 (Paris, 1998), 169–201; and James K. Hopkins, Into the Heart of the Fire: The British in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, CA, 1998), 108.

14. On these migration waves, see the essays by Michel Dreyfus, Anne Morelli, Mauro Cerutti, Werner Roder, and Olivier Rathkolb in L'émigration politique en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles (Rome, 1991). For the relationship between "economic" and "political" emigration with specific reference to France, see Émile Temime, "Émigration 'politique' et émigration 'économique,'" in L'émigration politique en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles, 57–72; and Antonio Bechelloni, "Antifascist Resistance in France from the 'Phony War' to the Liberation: Identity and Destinies in Question," in Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser M. Ottanelli, eds., Italian Workers of the World: Labor Migration and the Formation of Multiethnic States (Urbana, IL, and Chicago, 2001), 215–31. For an analysis of the role of class in the incorporation of migrant workers, see Donna R. Gabaccia and Fraser Ottanelli, "Diaspora or International Proletariat? Italian Labor, Labor Migration and the Making of Multiethnic States, 1815–1939," Diaspora 6, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 61–84.

15. I borrow the term from Elisabetta Vezzosi, Il socialismo indifferente: Immigrati italiani e Socialist Party negli Stati Uniti del primo Novecento (Rome, 1991), chapter 4.

16. Gabaccia and Ottanelli, "Diaspora or International Proletariat?" 61–84.

17. Gérard Noirel, Longwy: Immigrés et prolétaires, 1880–1980 (Paris, 1984), chapters 6 and 7; and Bruno Groppo, "La figure de l'émigré politique," in Le siècle des communismes (Paris, 2001), 425–39.

18. Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Italian Immigrants in the United States Labor Movement from 1880 to 1929," in Bruno Bezza, ed., Gli Italiani fuori d'Italia: Gli emigrati italiani nei movimenti operai dei loro paesi d'adozione (1880–1940) (Milan, 1983), 265–67. On the Federazione socialista italiana of the Socialist Party, see Vezzosi, Il socialismo indifferente. On the syndicalist Federazione Socialista Italiana, see Michael Miller Topp, Those without a Country (Minneapolis, 2001).

19. Ewa Morawska, "Immigrants, Transnationalism, and Ethnicization: A Comparison of This Great Wave and the Last," in E Pluribus Unum? 179–89; John J. Bukowczyk, And My Children Did Not Know Me: A History of the Polish Americans (Bloomington, IN, 1987), 34–75; Mary E. Cygan, "The Polish-American Left," in Paul Buhle and Dan Georgakas, eds., The Immigrant Left in the United States (Albany, NY, 1996), 148–172; Mary Woroby, "The Ukrainian Immigrant Left in the United States, 1880–1950," ibid., 185–205; Rudolph J. Vecoli, "The Italian Immigrants in the United States Labor Movement from 1880 to 1929," in Gli italiani fuori d'Italia, 257–306; and Bruno Ramirez, "Immigration, Ethnicity, and Political Militance: Patterns of Radicalism in the Italian-American Left, 1880–1930," in Valeria Gennaro Lerda, ed., From "Melting Pot" to Multiculturalism: The Evolution of Ethnic Relations in the United States and Canada (Rome, 1990), 115–41. The quote is from Michael Miller Topp, "The Italian American Left: Transnationalism and the Quest for Unity," in The Immigrant Left in the United States, 142.

20. The youngest were twenty-year-old Giacomino Apice, a part-time student and manual laborer from Los Angeles, and Frank Cali (a.k.a. Frank Marion), an unemployed shoe worker from Brooklyn. See "Giacomino Apice," ALBA, Fond 545 Opis 6 File 883, 9–10; "Frank Cali," ALBA, Fond 545 Opis 6 File 870, 36–37, and the file under his pseudonym "Marion Frank," ALBA, Fond 545 Opis 6 File 518, 80 and Fond 545 Opis 6 File 944, 24–25.

21. I borrow the notion of "historical" generation from James R. Barrett, "Americanization from the Bottom Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880–1930," Journal of American History 79, no. 3 (1992): 998.

22. Jean Marie Guillon, "Les étrangers dans la Résistance du sud-est," in Philippe Joutard and François Marcot, eds., Les étrangers dans la Résistance en France (Besançon, France, 1992), 142.

23. "Emilio Dal Col," ALBA fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 878, 18–20; and "Vittorio Strukel," CPC busta 4976, and his obituary in The Volunteer 17, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 7, 21.

24. "Pietro Fusari," CPC busta 2205.

25. "[R]eati contro la proprieta' e le persone," in "Giuseppe Esposito," CPC busta 1895.

26. "Emilio Dal Col," ALBA fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 878, 18–20; "Vittorio Strukel," CPC busta 4976, and his obituary in The Volunteer, 7 and 21; "Mafaldo Rossi," CPC busta 4451; "Giuseppe Esposito," CPC busta 1895; and "Pasquale Areta," CPC busta 183; and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 522, 33.

27. Giovanni Menella a.k.a. "John Landy," ALBA Fond 545, Opis 3, File 453. Over 80 percent of Italian American volunteers whose formative political experience had taken place in Italy emigrated during the 1920s.

28. In a 1926 letter to Mussolini, the Italian ambassador estimated that in New York City alone there were over 1,000 "subversives" who had entered the country illegally by "deserting" Italian vessels, see "Attività dei sovversivi, 1925–1926," Pos A 63, Busta 15, Ambasciata Washington (schedatura provvisoria), Archivio Storico Ministero Affari Esteri, Rome (hereafter ASMAE).

29. "Italian Ambassador to Benito Mussolini, July 3, 1926," and "Italian Ambassador to Consul Axerio, June 10, 1926," in "Attività sovversivi, 1925–1926," Pos A63, busta 15, Ambasciata Washington (schedatura provvisoria), ASMAE; and "Caradossi Umberto," Personale di Pubblica Sicurezza fuori servizio, versamento 1957, busta 244, fascicolo 1453, ACS.

30. Guida generale degli Archivi di Stato italiani (Rome, 1981), 150–51.

31. For the surveillance of Italian American anti-Fascists by Italian authorities see Fraser M. Ottanelli, "Fascist Informant and Italian-American Labor Leader: The Paradox of Vanni Buscemi Montana," The Italian American Review 7, no. 1 (Spring 1998):104–16.

32. Mussolini's letter is in "Deportazione sovversivi, 1926–1927," Pos A 63, Busta 15, Ambasciata Washington (schedatura provvisoria), ASMAE.

33. The text of the letter is in "Luigi Alleva," CPC busta 73.

34. Erasmo Abate," CPC busta 1; and Hugo Rolland, Il sindacalismo anarchico di Alberto Meschi (Florence, 1972), ix–xi.

35. "Mafaldo Rossi," CPC busta 4451.

36. Corrado Batelli, Giovanni Capitano, and Carlo Fragiacomo were members of the Italian Republican Party. See "Corrado Batelli," CPC busta 402; "Giovanni Capitano," CPC busta 1031 and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 512, 100; and "Carlo Fragiacomo," CPC busta 1923, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 494, 153. Batelli apparently joined the Communist Party sometime before leaving for Spain; see "Chi sono? Corrado Batelli," L'Unità Operaia, February 15, 1938. Antonio Martocchia was one of the founders of, and a regular contributor to Germinal; see "Antonio Martocchia," CPC busta 3109. Following his release from jail in Italy in 1925, Domenico Rosati also made his way back illegally to the United States, where he worked for Carlo Tresca's Il Martello. In contrast, Alfonso Abruzzo and Luigi Sironi were linked with the galleanisti. See "Domenico Rosati," CPC busta 4413; "Alfonso Abruzzo," CPC busta 8; and "Luigi Sironi," CPC busta 4837, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 505, 141.

37. Albino Zattoni was an organizer and local leader of the Italian Federation of the Socialist Party of the United States. See "Albino Zattoni Papers," file "Spain Documents" in "Italian American Collection," IHRC. Luigi Maraldo was a regular at the Italian Socialist club "Carlo Pisacane" in the Bronx; see: "Luigi (Dante) Maraldo," CPC busta 3012. Menella (a.k.a. "Landy") and Mellina held lesser positions in the Communist Party's Italian Committee for the New York district. In addition, together with Federico Salvini, Paolo Sarti, Domenico Medelin, and Salvatore Menis, Mellina belonged to the "Garibaldi" section of the I.W.O. See "Ciro (Giovanni) Menella," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 946, 47–48, and his file under the pseudonym "John Landy," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 3 File 453; "Alfonso Sartore Mellina," CPC busta 3213, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 499, 170 and 172.

38. Cazzoli, Pio Guaraldo, Alfonso Mellina, Dino Neri, and Giovanni Vinaccia were members of the restaurant workers union; Domenico Kreschiak, Federico Salvini, and Joseph Starini joined construction locals affiliated to the AFL; while Giovanni Tremul and Vincenzo Lamarca joined CIO unions and Emilio Dal Col was active in the Marine Cooks and Stewards union on the San Francisco waterfront. See "Ubaldo Cazzoli" [a.k.a. "Giulio Fantini"], ALBA Fond 545 Opis 3 File 453, 27. "Pio Guaraldo," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 516, 136 and 138; "Alfonso Sartore Mellina," CPC busta 3213, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 499, 170 and 172; "Gino [Dino] Neri," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 3 File 453, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 520, 20; "Giovanni [John] Vinaccia," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 1006, 39–40; "Domenico Kreschiak, [Crescia]," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 926, 70–73, and idem ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 497, 37; "Federico Salvini," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 979, 75; "Joseph Starini," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 994, 3; "Giovanni Tremul," "Italiani caduti in Spagna," 136; "Vincenzo [James] Lamarca," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 517, 16; and "Emilio Dal Col," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 878, 18–20.

39. "Medaglioni: Francesco Coco" L'Unità Operaia, September 4, 1937; "Francesco Coco," CPC busta 1389; ALBA Fond 545 Opis 3 Folder 874, 33–39; Dirk Hoerder and Christiane Harzig, eds., The Immigrant Labor Press in North America, vol. 3 (Westport, CT, 1987), 82; and "Ubaldo Cazzoli," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 494, 19, and under pseudonym "Giulio Fantini" Fond 545, Opis 3, File 453.

40. "... io pure sarei contenta se potessi essere la al tuo fianco a prendere di mira senza fallire i colpi quei dilittuosi mostruosi infami fascisti .... Fa il tuo dovere di giovane libero e io faró il mio da vecchia ribelle ... ti adoro tu e tutti i miei buoni figli che la rischiate tutto purché il mostro muoia." Letter in "Luigi Sironi," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 529, 39.

41. "Giuseppe Dalleo," CPC busta 1588; and Carl Marzani, The Education of a Reluctant Radical Book 1 (New York, 1992), 121–25. See also "Michael Costa," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 876, 24–32; "Marion Frank a.k.a. Frank Cali," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 518, 80; "Ralph Fasanella," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 887, 61–64, "Ralph Fasanella, interview with author, June 9, 1996"; and his obituary in The Volunteer 20, no. 1 (Winter 1997–1998): 16.

42. "Anthony De Maio," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 880, 1–12, 14–20; "Michael Costa," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 876, 24–32; "Marion Frank a.k.a. Frank Cali," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 518, 80; "Amadeo Sabatini," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 979, 75; "Ralph Fasanella," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 887, 61–64; Ralph Fasanella, interview with author, June 9, 1996; his obituary in The Volunteer, 16; "John Tisa," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 1002, 34–47; "Obriot Tersil," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 957, 6–17; "Sidney Croto," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 877, 51–53; "Joe Drill," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 883, 9–10; "Anthony Rico Rusciano," [a.k.a. Richard Rosciano] ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 978, 1–17; and "Giovanni 'John' Vinaccia or Vinacci," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 1006, 39–49.

43. On the "Americanization" of the CPUSA during the 1930s, see Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to World War II (New Brunswick, NJ, 1991), 107–35.

44. Domenico Saudino, "Il movimento fascista fra gli italiani d'America," La Parola del Popolo 37 (December 1958–January 1959): 69–72; and Philip V. Cannistraro, Blackshirts in Little Italy: Italian Americans and Fascism, 1921–1929 (West Lafayette, IN, 1999).

45. On the efforts of Italian Fascism to manipulate the Italian American electorate, see Stefano Luconi, La "diplomazia parallela": Il regime fascista e la mobilitazione politica degli italo-americani (Milan, 2000), chapter 1.

46. The connection between the development of an Italian ethnic identity and support for Fascism is explored by Madeline J. Goodman, "The Evolution of Ethnicity: Fascism and Anti-Fascism in the Italian-American Community, 1914–1945," PhD diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 1993, 56–66, 148–64.

47. "Alberto Pallone," CPC busta 3674 and "Alfonso Sartore Mellina," CPC busta 3213; and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 499, 170 and 172.

48. Bruno Sereni wrote for several anti-Fascist newspapers including La Stampa Libera, while Ubaldo Cazzoli headed the "Patronati italiani per l'aiuti alle vittime del fascismo." See "Bruno Sereni," CPC busta 4757 and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 505, 101; and "Ubaldo Cazzoli," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 494, 19, and under pseudonym "Giulio Fantini," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 3 File 453. See also "Giuseppe Dalleo," CPC busta 31, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 492, 6; "Albino Zattoni," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 1018, 40–43; "Pio Guaraldo," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 516, 136 and 138.

49. "Pasquale Areta," CPC busta 183; "Alfonso Mellina," CPC busta 3213; "Bruno Sereni," CPC busta 4757; "Vito Puglia," CPC busta 4154, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 502, 270. Italian American anti-Fascists also took part in the protests against the arrival in New York Harbor of the German liner Bremen in 1934. See "Paolo Sarti" (a.k.a. Paolino Sala [Perez]), ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 979, 52–57.

50. "Fascismo e antifascismo," busta 24 (1935), Stati Uniti 1931–1945, Affari Politici, ASMAE.

51. See "Michele Centrone," CPC busta 1243 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 132; ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 Folder 491, 170; "Italiani caduti in Spagna," 120; "Domenico Rosati," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 504 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 401; "Libertario Clerico," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 491, 227 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 139; "Ettore Fontana," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 folder 891, 5–8, Fond 545 Opis 3 folder 766; and "Vittorio Strukel," obituary, The Volunteer, 7, 21.

52. Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War (Stanford, CA, 1994), 64–65.

53. Vittorio Strukel traveled to Spain with a passport issued to a Victor Friere Pozuelo. Once in Spain he took the name "Vittorio Furlani." See his obituary in The Volunteer, 7 and 21, and his personnel files under the name "Vittorio Furlani" in ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 514, 191. See also "Francesco Calvaruso," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 512, 53–54, and ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 512, 52; and "Carlo Fragiacomo," I nostri volontari in Spagna, 111–13. Corrado Batelli, Dino Neri, Giovanni Devescovi, and Paolo Sarti traveled with a Spanish passport issued respectively to "Conrado Batalla Farina," "Enrico Sanchez," and "Paolino Sala Perez." See "Corrado Batelli," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 861, 127, Gino (Dino) Neri," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 520, 20, "Giovanni Devescovi," I nostri volontari in Spagna, 99 and 101; and "Paolo Sarti," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 528, 9.

54. "Console Vecchietti to Ministro Esteri, 9 Dicembre, 1938," in "Umberto Caradossi," Personale di Pubblica Sicurezza, versamento 1957, busta 244, fascicolo 1453, ACS; "Alfonso Giuseppe Abruzzo," CPC busta 8; "Francesco Mazzetti," CPC busta 3178; and "Francesco Coco," CPC busta 1389.

55. "Joe Drill," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 883, 9–10. After his release, Drill crossed the Pyrenees into Spain at the end of 1937.

56. American women were allowed to volunteer only if they served in the medical services or as social workers. The only exception was Evelyn Hutchins, who served in Spain as a truck driver. See Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 70–71.

57. "Jersey nurse joins UN organization after hectic battle experience," in Sunday Star Ledger (Newark, NJ) November 10, 1946; "I was a Catholic nurse in Loyalist Spain," typewritten manuscript Frances Patai Papers, Frances Patai Collection, Biographical File, box 1, ALBA; "Résumé of itinerary and services of Ave Bruzzichesi, Spanish War," typewritten document, Frances Patai papers; and Arthur H. Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade (New York, 1967), 339 and 363. See also her letters in Cary Nelson and Jefferson Hendricks, eds., Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War (New York, 1996), 363–368, 433–434. The other Italian American woman to go to Spain was Germina Galleani. A teacher by profession, she worked as a secretary for the brigades' medical services. "Germina Galleani," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 496, 18.

58. Nelson and Hendricks, eds., Madrid 1937, 458–59.

59. See, for example, Carlo Fragiacomo, who traveled back to the United States on a passport issued by the Spanish Embassy in Paris issued to "Fragas Vega," and Vittorio Strukel made it back to the United States with the support of sympathetic French seamen. Carlo Fragiacomo, I nostri volontari in Spagna, 113, and "Vittorio Strukel," The Volunteer (Fall 1995): 7 and 21.

60. Agostino Boccioni, Bruno Bonturi, Luigi Rigamonti, Henry Albertini, and Pietro Fusari were held on Ellis Island along with veterans from other ethnic groups. See "Agostino Boccioni" CPC busta 687, La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 89, and PS 1938 41; "Bruno Bonturi" CPC busta 743; "Luigi Rigamonti" CPC busta 4321, PS 1938 48 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 392–93; The Volunteer for Liberty: Organ of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (December 15, 1938), 4; and John Peter Kraljic, "The Croatian Community in North America and the Spanish Civil War," MA thesis, Hunter College, City University of New York, 2002.

61. On July 15, 1939, L'Unità del Popolo printed a list of thirty-three Italian Americans held in French camps. See also "Domenico Rosati," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 401, and "Luigi Vallarino" CPC busta 5301 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 477.

62. Those handed over to the Italian Fascist authorities include Giuseppe Baldo, Armando Baracani, Luigi Aldo Bertani, Romano Krstovec, Carmelo Laguaragnella, Benedetto Mori, Libertario Clerico, Alberto Pallone, and Angelo Pesce. See "Giuseppe Baldo," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 60; "Armando Baracani," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 61; "Luigi Aldo Bertani," CPC busta 550 and PS 1939 File 54; "Romano Krstovec (Della Croce)," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 256; "Carmelo Laguaragnella," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 259; "Benedetto" Mori, CPC busta 3415; "Libertario Clerico," CPC busta 380 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 139; "Alberto Pallone," CPC busta 3674; "Angelo Pesce," CPC busta 3889. Luigi Maraldo and Bruno Micor were captured by Franco's troops who then turned them over to Italian authorities; see "Luigi Maraldo," CPC busta 3012 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 284–85; and "Bruno Micor," La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 309.

63. "Alvaro Ghia," CPC busta 2358 and La Spagna nel nostro cuore, 219.

64. See Carlo Marzani's letter to his uncle in "Carlo Marzani," CPC 3114.

65. "a [sic] sabido rapresentar en España la verdadera Italia" in "Albino Zattoni," ALBA Fond 545 Opis 6 File 1018, 40–43.

66. Dalleo's letter was printed in L'Unità Operaia, September–October 1938, 9.

67. Albert Prago, "Jews in the International Brigades," in Alvah Bessie and Albert Prago, eds., Our Fight: Writings by Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (New York, 1987), 94–103; David Diamant, Combattants juifs dans l'armée républicaine espagnole, 1936–1939 (Paris, 1979); and Jewish Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, http://www.alba-valb.org/curriculum/index.php?module=1.

68. "Hyman Katz to his mother, 11/25/37," in Nelson and Hendricks, eds., Madrid 1937, 31–33.

69. "Canute Frankson to my dear friend," in ibid., 33–34.

70. Robin D. G. Kelley, "This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do," in Danny Duncan, ed., African Americans in the Spanish Civil War (New York, 1992), 6.

71. Oscar Hunter, "700 Calendar Days," Alvah Bessie, ed., The Heart of Spain (New York, 1952), 29.

72. "Lied der Internationalen Brigaden," in Canciones de las Brigadas Internacionales (Barcelona, 1938), 30.

Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.

 



Fall, 2007 Previous Table of Contents Next