Emilio Sereni

Emilio Sereni (1907–1977) was an Italian Communist Party politician. He was minister of public works (February–May 1947) in the Government of Italy. Born in Rome, his parents Samuele Sereni and Alfonsa Pontecorvo were members of the Roman Jewish upper class. His father was the doctor of the King of Italy, his uncle Angelo president of the Roman Jewish community. Enzo was the second of three brothers: the first, Enrico, a scientist linked to the anti-fascist movements of “Giustizia e Libertà” and committed suicide at a young age, the third Emilio, a senator of the Italian Republic, partisan and communist militant. The events of the Sereni family are evoked in the novel Il Gioco dei Regni by Clara Sereni (Florence, Giunti Gruppo Editoriale, 1993), Emilio's third child.

Sereni had become a Zionist as a boy, and was one of the first Italian Zionists. [1] Sereni married Ada Ascarelli, also from a wealthy Jewish family, in Rome, where the eldest daughter Hana was born. After graduating from the University of Rome, he made aliyah to the British Mandate of Palestine in 1927. He worked in the orange grove in Rehovot and helped build the Givat Brenner kibbutz where his second daughter Hagar and third son Daniel were born. Already an enthusiastic socialist, Sereni was also active in the Histadrut union. He was a pacifist who advocated co-existence with Arabs and the integration of Jewish and Arab societies. You sent Yesterday at 11:34 AM Sereni was sent to Europe in the years 1931-1934 to help bring people to Palestine through aliyah and was briefly arrested by the Gestapo. He helped organize the Hechalutz movement in Nazi Germany and also smuggled people and money out of Germany. He also went to the United States of America to help organize the local Zionist movement. During the Second World War, he was part of the British Army and launched anti-fascist propaganda in Egypt. He was then commissioned by the British to Iraq, where he spent part of his time organizing clandestine aliyahs. He had trouble with British Army superiors over his Zionist plans and was briefly jailed for counterfeiting passports. You sent Yesterday at 11:35 AM He later helped organize the parachute units of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which sent agents to occupied Europe. In particular, Sereni inspired - in Bari, from January 1944 - the creation of a unit of the Jewish Agency which had the purpose of helping and eventually saving the Jews who were in the territories occupied by the Nazis. Of about 250 volunteer recruits, about 110 were selected to train and 33 were parachuted to Europe, including Sereni, despite his relatively advanced age. On May 15, 1944, he was parachuted into northern Italy under the false name of Samuel Barda but was immediately captured in Maggiano di Lucca. Taken to Verona, he was tortured and locked up in the cells obtained in the basement of the INA building, which became the seat of the SD (the secret service of the SS). He was transferred to the transit camp in Bolzano on 25 August 1944 and detained in block E, fenced with barbed wire because it was reserved for political prisoners considered the most dangerous, as reported by Vittore Bocchetta in 1940-1945 Quinquennio Infame, Verona, Edizioni Gielle, 1991. He was then deported to Dachau on 5 October 1944 where he was subjected to a special penalty regime. A survivor belonging to the same transport, Raffaele Capuozzo, in a filmed testimony released to the historical archive of the city of Bolzano, told of Sereni's temper in Dachau: "The head-lager came with a list and called out Samuel Barda, captain English paratrooper. He spoke in German, I don't know what he said. He began to punch him in the face and this captain, who must have been five and a half meters tall, did not move, he remained at attention undeterred as if they were caressing him ”. Registered in Dachau under the name Shmuel Barda and with the number 113160, Sereni was taken on November 17, 1944 to a special punishment cell to be interrogated and, according to the documentation, shot on November 18, 1944. You sent Yesterday at 11:35 AM Other famous martyrs who were parachuted to Europe with the unity of the Jewish Agency were Hannah Szenes and Haviva Reik. Kibbutz Netzer Sereni bears his name.

A chapter of the essay on the history of the Italian Zionists A land to be reborn. Italian Jews and the emigration to Palestine before the war (1920-1940), by Arturo Marzano, Milan, Marietti, 2003, is dedicated to Sereni. You sent Yesterday at 11:36 AM Enzo Sereni was a translator, author of articles, essays and volumes on the history of religious thought and contemporary history. Prior to aliyah in Palestine, he published articles in the weekly Israel.