Felice Malgaroli

Felice Malgaroli was born in Broni, in the Oltrepò Pavese region, in 1924. His grandfather, father and uncle all had socialist ideas and were tried and convicted by the Special Court for the Defence of the State. At the age of 13, he moved to Turin with his parents. When the war broke out he served in the Engineer Corps in Pavia, but after the 8^th of September he joined the Resistance in the Garibaldi formations active in the Po and Pellice valleys. He was captured in December 1944 and deported to Mauthausen the following month. He returned home in May 1945.

He started working at Riv, a ball bearing factory, in Turin and was politically committed and militant in the Italian Communist Party (PCI) for a time. After graduating from night school he was hired as an electrician in the Electricity Company; in 1952 he made the decision to emigrate to Venezuela. He changed countries and continents again in the years that followed, living for a long time in New Zealand.

Upon returning to Italy, he focused on writing his memoirs, dedicating several books and written contributions to his experiences as a soldier, partisan, factory worker, deportee and expatriate. In 1992 he published “Domani chissà. Storia autobiografica 1931-1952” (Tomorrow who knows: an Autobiographical story 1931-1952); in 1995 “Transeuntes. Italiani, emigranti a vita” (Transeuntes. Italians, lifelong emigrants); in 2003 “Dal Piemonte alla Nuova Zelanda. La mia tregua tra la memoria del passato e la realtà del presente” (From Piedmont to New Zealand. My truce between the memory of the past and the reality of the present). He died in Turin in 2017.

Story collected in collaboration with the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale.