Paolo Vittorelli
 Paolo Vittorelli    (journalist, politician) | |
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| Born | Raffaello Battino 9 July 1915 Alexandria, Egypt |
| Died | 24 March 2003 (Age 87) Turin, Piedmont |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Religion | Jewish |
| Member of | Trilateral Commission |
Italian centre-left politician and TLC member who attended 3 Bilderbergs in the 1960s. Worked with the British during WW2. First president of the Institute for Research and Defense Information Studies.
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Paolo Vittorelli was the pseudonym used by Raffaello Battino, an Italian journalist-commentator, author and politician of the centre-left. As his public profile grew, he was increasingly referred to as Paolo Battino Vittorelli, the name by which he is identified in most posthumous sources. He engaged actively in antifascist propaganda work during the war years, most of which he spent exiled in Cairo.[1][2][3][4]
Contents
Early life
Paolo Battino Vittorelli was born (as Raffaello Battino) in Alexandria at a time when Egypt was controlled militarily and politically as part of the British empire. His family identity would have been regarded as Graeco-Italian Jewish. His ancestral roots tracked back to Corfu, which had been ruled from Venice for half a millennium till the end of the eighteenth century, and which remained heavily influenced by Venetian and Italian culture through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Amedeo Battino, his father, had graduated from the University of Athens and then as a newly qualified lawyer moved to Egypt in 1908, attracted by the commercial opportunities and the booming free-wheeling economy which had opened up to European businesses since the Opening of the Suez Canal back in 1864. His mother, born Blanche Caroli, ended up in Alexandria after Giacomo Caroli, her own father (and thereby Raffaello's maternal grandfather) had moved to Egypt following the death of his wife (born Emilia Mattatia, Raffaello's maternal grandmother), and set himself up in business as the owner-manager of a small hotel in Alexandria. Giacomo Caroli was born in Trieste but had moved to Corfu when he married, as his second wife, Emilia Mattatia, who had grown up on the island.[3][5] The child grew up bilingual, fluent both in Italian and in French, which was the language still favoured by the largely "expatriate European" community of bourgeois businessmen and bureaucrats in Egypt.[4]
Anti-fascism
In 1936, having moved to France to graduate in law, he meets the Rosselli brothers and enters the anti-fascist movement Giustizia e libertà. (Justice and Freedom). Aldo Garosci suggests the clandestine name of Paolo Vittorelli, with which he will sign himself as and will be known as throughout the rest of his life. The following year, in Paris, he participates to the movement's weekly.
In 1938, Vittorelli was sent to Italy to make contact with the underground movement but was stopped by the fascist police and returned to France.[6] After the German occupation of France, he took refuge in Cairo, where he founded Justice and Freedom - Egypt, and carried out an intense propaganda activity aimed above all at the Italian soldiers who were prisoners of the British[7]. He taught the history of economic doctrines and international law at the French faculty of law in Cairo.
He returned to Italy in 1944 and joined the Partito d'Azione; (Action Party); he becomes editor-in-chief of the organ of the “L'Italia libera (Free Italy) party and directs the Piedmontese clandestine edition.
Post war
At the time of the dissolution of the Action Party (20 October 1947), together with Tristano Codignola, iero Calamandrei, Aldo Garosci and Giuseppe Faravelli, he did not join the Italian Socialist Party but formed the 'Azione Socialista Giustizia e Libertà (Socialist Action Justice and Freedom) movement. Vittorelli becomes deputy director of the party newspaper L'Italia Socialista, which arose from the ashes of L'Italia Libera.
In 1953, Vittorelli joined the Popular Unity (UP) movement, but fails to get any representative elected to Parliament. On November 28, 1954, the Central Committee of UP elected Vittorelli to the Management and Executive Committee of the movement.
In 1957, UP - including Vittorelli - merged into the Italian Socialist Party. In 1963 he was elected senator, until 1968. Meanwhile (1967) he translates Isaiah Berlin's book Karl Marx into Italian. With the institution of regional decentralization, Vittorelli was elected President of the Piedmont Regional Council (1970-1972); he is also the first president of ISTRID - Institute for Research and Defense Information Studies (at the time known as the Istituto Studi e Ricerche Difesa/Institute for Defense Studies and Research).
Between June 1969 and May 1976 he directed Il Lavoro, the historic newspaper of the Genoese PSI; between 1972 and 1979 he was a member of the VI and VII Legislature of the Italian Republic (1972-1979); between 1976 and 1978 he directed the Avanti!, an information organ of the Italian Socialist Party.
Authorship
During his later decades Vittorelli turned increasingly to writing books. At the 1981 Viareggio Prize awards he was recipient of the President's Prize for his memoires of the (defunct since 1947) Action Party, "L'età della tempesta. Autobiografia romanzata di una generazione".[8] He followed through in 1998 with a sequel, also based on his knowledge of the Action Party, this time entitled "L'età della speranza. Testimonianze e ricordi del Partito d’Azione" and dealing with what one source identifies as the party's "militant years" ("... agli anni della militanza").[9][10]
In 1998, after the dissolution of the PSI, he joined the Democrats of the Left, together with Valdo Spini.
Events Participated in
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bilderberg/1964 | 20 March 1964 | 22 March 1964 | US Virginia Williamsburg | A year after this meeting, the post of GATT/Director-General was set up, and given Eric Wyndham White, who attended the '64 meeting. Several subsequent holders have been Bilderberg insiders, only 2 are not known to have attended the group. |
| Bilderberg/1965 | 2 April 1965 | 4 April 1965 | Italy Villa d'Este | The 14th Bilderberg meeting, held in Italy |
| Bilderberg/1967 | 31 March 1967 | 2 April 1967 | St John's College (Cambridge) UK | Possibly the only Bilderberg meeting held in a university college rather than a hotel (St. John's College, Cambridge) |
References
- ↑ https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2003/03/25/addio-vittorelli-ex-direttore-del-lavoro.html
- ↑ http://www.storiaxxisecolo.it/antifascismo/biografie%20antifascisti105.html
- ↑ a b http://www.fiapitalia.it/presidenti-e-protagonisti/vittorelli-paolo
- ↑ a b https://www.laportadivetro.org/50-anni-di-regionalismo-paolo-battino-vittorelli-2/
- ↑ Antonio Cassarà, È morto Paolo Vittorelli, in: L’Unità, 26 marzo 2003
- ↑ Nuova Repubblica, anno I, supplemento al n. 9, 5 May 1953, p. 5
- ↑ http://siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it/cgi-bin/pagina.pl?TipoPag=prodente&Chiave=52327&RicDimF=2
- ↑ http://www.premioletterarioviareggiorepaci.it/premi/vincitori/1-Premio%20Letterario%20Viareggio-R%C3%A8paci
- ↑ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/abs/missed-connection-relations-between-italian-antifascist-emigration-and-british-forces-in-egypt-19401944/41B3A9D8DCE4A6659E4B994AD8ADE754
- ↑ https://stefanorolando.it/?p=466
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