We publish here the new contribution by Claudio Mezzanzanica, the result of archival research. It follows the previous episodes on fascist fraud in the province and on the reaction after the Matteotti crime.
In August 1943 nightmares and ghosts haunt Vittorio Emanuele III. There is that of Mussolini, for whom he ordered the arrest on 25 July after acting as his sidekick for over twenty years. There is that of the Germans, the former allies who are taking over Italy. In a month they brought in hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tanks from Brenner. There is that of the Americans, the new allies who concede nothing in the secret negotiations for a separate armistice. They want unconditional surrender and only that. There are voices, even within his entourage, calling for his abdication in favor of his son Umberto or, even worse, his cousin Amedeo d’Aosta. There are parties that are reorganizing themselves, while a demand for peace and freedom is rising from the country.
Then there is a ghost that comes from further away. AND that of the socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti assassinated on Mussolini’s orders twenty years earlier. The king had pretended nothing had happened and it was no coincidence. Matteotti was also a danger to the monarchy. On a trip to London, shortly before his assassination, he had collected documents that proved a case of corruption by the American oil company Sinclair towards the Italian government authorities to obtain oil concessions. The rumors circulating at the time spoke of money destined not only to Mussolini, through his brother Arnaldo, but also to the Royal House.
In the days following the fall of fascism for the king it was essential to continue to silence the newspapers, the parties, the Italian people. Thus the Badoglio government, which he appointed, continues to repress opposing voices. Politicians are arrested, demonstrations are banned, “subversive” material is seized.
Vincenzo Barbisan lived in Varese in via Walder 53 and he was a street vendor. On the morning of August 29, 1943 he is arrested in Germignaga by the Luino carabinieri.
He was distributing some postcards depicting the moment of Matteotti’s kidnapping and murder. Twenty-nine were found and seized on the cart where he displayed his goods.
The images are those of the original flyers, preserved in Barbisan’s file at the Central State Archives in Rome
Barbisan is sent to the prisons of Varese with theaccused of distributing “subversive material” and of having an accomplice, Stefano Triacca, already previously sentenced to confinement. Triacca, however, manages to escape and the police send phonograms throughout Italy to track him down. On 7 September the Varese Police Headquarters gave the order to track him down throughout the national territory as a dangerous subversive.
Barbisan will remain in prison until September 23, but his name entered the police file as that of a dangerous agitator. In mid-November, while he is in Porto Valtravaglia with his cart, he is arrested again, this time by the republican police. He was referred to the war tribunal and reported to the German Military Command. The Germans waste no time; if they have it delivered on December 7th e on 21 February 1944 they sent him to Mauthausen. In his file we find written: “[…] communist, deported for security reasons”.
Vincenzo Barbisan died in Mauthausen in March 1945, at just 43 years old.
The ghosts of the king of Italy have killed a poor street vendor. The diligent officials of a state whose ultimate concern was the protection of its citizens and the bad guys of the time, the Germans, with their blind determination contributed to his assassination. Vincenzo Barbisan also dies because of him. He is a street vendor, a marginal person according to the police, but he is someone who knows how things went. He knows that Matteotti was murdered and the people who ask him for the postcards know it too.
In the interrogation report, to exonerate himself, he states that those photographs were requested from him and he limited himself to distributing them to those who requested them. So not only does he know, but others know, and want to express this knowledge of theirs, share it acquiring the postcard. Nothing is more subversive than sharing the truth. Vincenzo Barbisan in his being a man who shares a feeling and an idea with others is a culprit. A subversive. A man who must be deported for security reasons. He, a “ragman… homeless”as we read in some notes from the Carabinieri, is a danger for the fascism of Salò and for its German ally.
