MILAN – The partisan Eugenio Curiel, an antifascist education
His battle name was “Giorgio”. A Jew, a physicist and a philosopher, he was also a communist militant and, in 1944, the founder of the partisan organization Fronte della gioventù (Youth Front) for the liberation from Nazi-fascism. He was 32 years old when he was killed by fascists in Milan, on February 24, 1945. Eugenio Curiel is considered one of the most important figures of the Italian Resistance and was one of eight Jews to be awarded a gold medal for military value for his contribution in the fight against fascism. Considering that on 650,000 partisans the gold medals were less than 700, the proportion highlights the importance of the Jewish contribution. “In that period, there were only 38,000 Jews in Italy. The fact that eight of them were presented with the gold medal, should make us think,” explained historian Liliana Picciotto, from the CDEC Foundation, in a meeting organized at the Shoah Memorial in Milan to honour his legacy.
Eugenio Curiel “the Milanese”
As historian Marco Cuzzi explained, Curiel lived and later died in Milan, which was then dominated by an entanglement of Nazi power and collaborators. The city was occupied by the SS from September 1943 and endured 660 days of terror. Although the Milanese Resistance was difficult and scarcely spread among the middle class, it acted in secrecy among students, workers, and intellectuals. It was among these groups that Curiel carried out his work. “He wasn’t just a man of action; he was also an educator,” recalled Roberto Cenati, president of the Milan branch of the Italian Partisans Association.
Having been expelled from teaching due to the racial laws, Curiel moved to Milan, where he came into contact with anti-fascist groups. He was arrested on 23 June 1939 and taken to San Vittore prison. On 26 January 1940, he was sent into confinement on Ventotene Island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, off the coast of southern Italy. Also confined there were Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, the authors of the Ventotene Manifesto, as it later became known, which formed the basis of the European Union.
Four years later, Curiel returned to Milan and founded the Fronte della Gioventù, a group that brought together young anti-fascists with diverse political views.
His readings, his Judaism
Books were at the heart of Curiel’s education and commitment to educate others, as Alberto Cavaglion, professor of History at the University of Florence and Judaism scholar, reminded us. Born in Trieste in 1912, Curiel was influenced in his youth by books such as “Iniziazione” (Initiation) by Rudolf Steiner, as well as by the modernist atmosphere that sought to reconcile science, spirituality, and ethical commitment. Marxism came later and gradually.
Like other Jewish intellectuals of his generation, Cavaglion explained, Curiel never found the tools to shape his identity and commitment in the traditional Jewish world. “Sadly, none of them took inspiration from the Torah or the Bible, even though they are full of themes such as freedom, justice and equality.” Everyone tried to find their masters elsewhere, in Benedetto Croce, Steiner or Piero Gobetti, for example. We cannot overlook this fact. It makes us wonder what happened to Jewish culture, given that, between 1934 and 1938, when the arrests and confinement began, it was no longer capable of offering teachings to young people trying to find ways to oppose Fascism.”
Translated by Chiara Tona and revised by Rebecca Luna Escobar, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, trainees in the newsroom of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities — Pagine Ebraiche.