Daisy Heath
CAROLINE MOOREHEAD is the author of the international bestsellers A Train in Winter, A Bold and Dangerous Family and Village of Secrets, nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. Caroline Moorehead is also the biographer of Bertrand Russell, Freya Stark, Iris Origo and Martha Gellhorn. She lives in London, UK.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Fortunes Hostages
Sidney Bernstein: A Biography
Freya Stark: A Biography
Over the Rim of the World: The Letters of Freya Stark (ed.)
Troublesome People
Betrayed: Children in Todays World (ed.)
Bertrand Russell: A Life
The Lost Treasures of Troy
Dunants Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross
Iris Origo: Marchesa of Val dOrcia
Martha Gellhorn: A Life
Human Cargo: A Journey Among Refugees
The Letters of Martha Gellhorn (ed.)
Dancing to the Precipice: Lucie de la Tour du Pin and the French Revolution
A Train in Winter: A Story of Resistance, Friendship and Survival
Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France
A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini
PUBLISHED BY RANDOM HOUSE CANADA
Copyright 2019 Caroline Moorehead
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2020 by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United Kingdom by Chatto & Windus, an imprint of Vintage, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies, London in 2019. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
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Random House Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: A house in the mountains : the women who liberated Italy from fascism / Caroline Moorehead.
Names: Moorehead, Caroline, author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190159855 | Canadiana (ebook) 2019015991X | ISBN 9780735279728 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735279735 (HTML)
Subjects: LCSH: WomenItalyBiography. | LCSH: Women political activistsItalyBiography. | LCSH: Women soldiersItalyBiography. | LCSH: Anti-fascist movementsItalyHistory20th century. | LCSH: Women and warItalyHistory20th century. | LCSH: Women in warItalyHistory20th century. | LCSH: Women political activistsItalyHistory20th century. | LCSH: ItalyHistoryAllied occupation, 1943-1947. | LCSH: ItalyHistoryGerman occupation, 1943-1945.
Classification: LCC DG574 .M66 2020 | DDC 945.091092/52dc23
Cover (front): antifascist women, Milan, 1945 SZ Photo/amw/Bridgeman Images, (back): Italian Alps courtesy of Dorling Kindersley/Alamy Stock Photo
v5.4
a
For Stella
The hour to resist had arrived; the hour to be men to die like men and to live like men.
Pietro Calamandrei, Uomini e citt della Resistenza, 1955
We women must now give everything to saving our homeland, our life, our bread. We too must not hesitate. We will show with our actions that we too are capable of every sacrifice.
Gruppi di difesa della donna e per lassistenza ai combattenti della libert, July 1944
Contents
Principal Characters
The four women friends
Ada Gobetti, widow of Piero Gobetti and mother of Paolo
Bianca Guidetti Serra, law graduate, companion of Alberto Salmoni
Silvia Pons, doctor, companion of Giorgio Diena and mother of Vittorio
Frida Malan, graduate in literature and sister of Roberto and Gustavo
The staffette
Lisetta Giua, engaged to Vittorio Foa
Lucia Boetta, guide to visiting dignatories
Matilde di Pietrantonio, renowned for kidnapping German officers
Gigliola Spinelli, procurer of weapons
Their Jewish friends
Primo Levi and his sister Anna Maria
Vanda Maestra
Luciana Nissim
Alberto Salmoni
Emanuele Artom
Vittorio Foa
Giorgio, Marisa and Paolo Diena
The partisans
Giorgio Agosti, a Turin magistrate
Dante Livio Bianco, a Turin lawyer, and his staffetta wife Pinella
Willy Jervis, liaison with the Allies, and his wife Lucilla
Ettore Marchesini, engineer and Adas husband
General Perotti, head of the northern Committee of National Liberation
Ferruccio Parri, head of the military wing of the Partito dAzione
Don Foglia, known as Don Dinamite
Giulio Bolaffi, commander of the Stellina Brigade
Tancredi Galimberti, partisan commander, known as Duccio
The Fascists
Giuseppe Solaro, party secretary in Turin
Valerio Paolo Zerbino, prefect in Turin
Guido Buffarini Guidi, Minister for the Interior in the Sal republic
Renato Ricci, head of the militia in the Sal republic
Alessandro Pavolini, head of the new Partito Fascista Repubblicano
Chronology
1943
10 July17 August | Allied landings and conquest of Sicily. |
25 July | Mussolini deposed, arrested and replaced by Marshal Badoglio. The war continues on the German side. |
3 September | Italians sign armistice with Allies, made public on 8 September. |
9 September | Allies land in Salerno. Germans begin occupation of Italy. Italys anti-Semitic laws of 1938 enforced. Ada Gobetti starts her war diary. |
12 September | Mussolini is rescued from the Gran Sasso by German commandos. |
23 September | The new Italian Social Republic is established at Sal with Mussolini at its head. Anti-Fascist leaders form clandestine Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (Committee of National Liberation) in Rome. There are now three Italian governments: Badoglios, the Roman CLN, and Mussolinis in Sal; and two armies, the German and the Allied. |
15 November | First congress of the newly constituted Fascist Party held in Verona. Jews declared enemies of the state. Arrests by Fascists and Germans get underway. As do orders for the draft of young men for Sals army, and for workers for the German war industry. The Allied Control Commission set up in the liberated south. |
November | Gruppi di difesa della donna e per lassistenza ai combattenti della libert Groups for the protection of women and assistance to fighters for freedom (GDD) set up. |