Only in recent years, historical studies on the anti-Semitic persecutions of fascism and on the Shoah in Italy have been able to begin to go into depth on the issue of the economic consequences of anti-Semitic regulations on the assets of entire families , or on the question of the seizures of entire activities or assets. of any value during the years of the genocide .
In particular, the recent publication of the excellent study by Ilaria Pavan focused on the history of the EGELI: the real estate management and liquidation body that first dealt with, in the so-called phase of the "persecution of the rights" of Jews, their activities or companies , and later, from 1943 to late 1945, in the phase of "persecution of lives", of any good of these people, destined for death for the "mere fault of being born", using an expression of the survivor of Auschwitz and life senator Liliana Segre .
This body was created in application of the RDL of February 9, 1939 n. 126, which concerned "the limits of real estate property and industrial and commercial activity for Italian citizens of Jewish race". And in paragraph 12, this law provided for the creation of a special body to deal with the management and liquidation of assets expropriated from Jews .
The real estate management and liquidation body was dissolved in 1957 , but ceased to exist almost sixty years after its establishment, following the issuance of the Ministerial Decree of 29 December 1997.
Recently, the historical archive of Intesa San Paolo acquired the entire EGELI archive owned by Cariplo , and proceeded, as part of an important project entitled "Restored Stories", to rearrange this heritage of over 2000 files relating precisely to the activity of the institution in the Lombardy region, creating an important historical exhibition from this historiographical heritage and making the nominative inventory of the archive available online to scholars.
In Milan, in the welcoming study room of the historical archive of Intesa San Paolo in via Gerolamo Morone 3, thanks to the work of Dr. Carla Cioglia who oversaw the entire making available of this precious documentary heritage, there are some files related to Sardinia .
EUGENIO FARGION - Inside the archive, there is also a file relating to Eugenio Fargion , born in Cagliari in 1894. It is the brother of Elisa Fargion , also born in Cagliari in 1891 by Abraham and Rachele Sacerdoti, then married to Gastone Levi from Ferrara and later arrested in Ferrara in 1944 and deported to Fossoli and then to Auschwitz Birkenau , aboard the same convoy on which, among others, Primo Levi also traveled, only to end up, together with her husband, eliminated in the rooms at extermination camp gas on the same day of arrival on February 26, 1944.
Unlike his sister, Eugenio saves his life thanks to his work as an engineer at the Aeroplani Caproni in Milan, thanks to which he is sent to Switzerland for some jobs. However, while it is located beyond the Alps, a sad destiny suffered in particular one of his villa and some land located in Cernobbio, precisely in the locality of Stemianico, which are all placed under sequestration and inventoried . This is clearly the villa “on Lake Como” of which Paola Fargion, Elisa's great-granddaughter and Eugenio's niece, tells. A villa in which, Paola says, Elisa and her husband also spent the last summer of 1943, when Eugenio asked his sister and brother-in-law not to leave the house, not to return to Ferrara, probably with the aim of organizing an escape in Switzerland for them too.
This was not the case, and unfortunately only Eugenio went to Switzerland. However, it is interesting to find out from the papers what happened after the EGELI seizure: issued a decree for the seizure of the house by the prefecture of Milan on 10 February 1945 and the delegation of the management of the property, on the following 3 March it was established that the Cariplo delegate would present himself with the bailiff at the villa to proceed with the taking over of the property. However, everything crashes; the villa, in fact, is revealed to have been occupied by the German command of the province of Como which has settled there, and does not want to leave from there. It is the beginning of a real tug-of-war between the EGELI and the German occupation authorities, in which the body underlines to Marshal Vogel, the main person responsible for the situation, how that asset is, by decree of the Italian Social Republic, owned by the Republic of Salò, and not a property that can be occupied by the Germans at will, and that must be released as soon as possible to allow it to be taken over by the fascist authorities.
VIRGINIA MARIANI - Moving on, there is also the file of Virginia Mariani : it is one of the three sisters of Vittorina Mariani , born in Porto Torres in 1904 and deported from Fossoli to Bergen Belsen on 2 August 1944, then freed in April 1945 in Farsleben, on the train bound for Theresienstadt intercepted by the Americans. The file relates to the apartment where Vittorina was arrested with her sister on April 17, 1944 in Milan. The decree of confiscation of the apartment is dated 25 August 1944, but the bureaucracy reaches the effective taking over of the property not before the following 6 December.
The bailiff, however, appears to take possession of the property only on February 11, 1945, meticulously compiling a report including a list of all the assets in the house , and also announcing the name and surname of the one who is taking over the apartment. The Marians, both Vittorina and the three sisters (two others will also be arrested in other locations outside Milan just a few hours after the arrest of Vittorina and Virginia) will return home all together, surviving the concentration camps.
GIUSEPPE CABRAS - The most interesting dossier of all, however, and containing real news in the events of Sardinian Jews or of Sardinian origins in those years, is that relating to Giuseppe Cabras , a man classified in Milan as "of Jewish race", and of which the only trace we have for now is his personal file preserved by the historical archive of the Intesa San Paolo.
This is a series of operations that started from 1 September 1944, when the Prefecture of Milan received a copy of the confiscation decrees relating to a security deposit made by Cabras corresponding to a sum of money of 200 lire . On July 18, 1944 the seizure in favor of the Italian Social Republic was definitively triggered, and the land credit of the savings bank of the provinces of Milan was delegated as usual for the taking over and management of the asset. On March 26, 1945, the savings bank delegated three people to take care of the tasks relating to the delivery of the assets and their management. Unfortunately, it all stops there. No other information on Giuseppe Cabras emerges from these documents, nor is the date of birth or the name of the parents indicated in the documents of the kidnapping, but only a home address located in the center of Milan.
On August 24, 1945, by decree of the Prefect of Milan, Cabras saw the seizure of this sum canceled and its return ordered, but he never showed up to take back this money . We don't know why. Research is still open.
Alessandro Matta
(director of the Sardinian Shoah Memorial Association)