Ferdinand Visco Gilardi

Ferdinando Visco-Gilardi was born in London on 20 June 1904, the son of romantic Giuseppe Visco Gilardi, policeman, private secretary to Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins, and detective. His father travelled extensively. Ferdinando grew up within the Evangelical Methodist Church of Milan. He was made secretary and then president of the ACDG (Christian Youth Association), which he directed until 1940. Under the Fascist regime the Association was a centre of culture and encounter between free scholars interested not only in religious and theological themes, but also in current affairs and politics. It's conferences were led by Ernesto Buonaiuti (exponent of modernist Catholicism), by the Jewish Mazzinian Ugo della Seta, by the Marxist philosopher Antonio Banfi, and then by Luigi Salvatorelli, Adolfo Omodeo, Lelio Basso and many others. In the early 1930s, Gilardi opened a cultural library near Piazza del Duomo and founded a small publishing house, Gilardi e Noto, which published titles by Buonaiuti, Giuseppe Renzi, Benedetto Croce, Niccolò Cuneo, Ugo della Seta, Paolo Treves, and Rudolf Steiner among them. The bookshop, which became a point of reference for many anti-fascists (Riccardo Bauer, Mario Venanzi, Lelio Basso, etc.) closed in 1936 and was evicted to make room for the construction of the current Arengario (government buildings).

In 1936 Gilardi married Mariuccia Caretti (Luino, 18.12.1905 - Sesto San Giovanni, 23.10.1960), with whom he shared both spirituality and communion of purpose. In 1940, having found a managerial position at FRO (Fabbriche Riunite Ossigeno), Gilardi moved with his family of three children (a fourth would be born in 1943), to Bolzano. In September 1944 he accidentally met Lelio Basso in Verona, who asked him to create an assistance network for the internment camps, providing him with the connections. Among these were Manlio Longon and other members of the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN) of Bolzano, which had already been operating since February 1944; and Ada Buffulini, and Laura Conti, detained in the concentration camp. From September 1944 Gilardi became the organizer of the CLN Bolzano's dense and articulated assistance network for deportees, coordinating it until 19 December 1944, when the entire CLN fell into the hands of Major Schiffer's Gestapo. He entered the Camp several times, disguised as a worker, carrying files, saws and other material to organize escapes and to establish contacts. After his arrest Gilardi was tortured several times without revealing the structure of the Organization which (led by Franca Turra "Anita", "Marcella" and many other women) continued its activity until the Liberation. In the camp he joined the clandestine PCI. He remained in the isolation cell block until 2 May when he, after leaving the camp, was appointed Deputy Prefect by the CLN for the province of Bolzano.

On 3 May 1945 Gilardi accompanied the Prefect Bruno De Angelis, representative of the new Italian government, who received from the generals Wolff and von Vietinghoff the surrender of the German troops and the transfer of power to the CLN. Gilardi's wife, Mariuccia Caretti, shared fully the risks of conspiracy, in a conscious commitment to common struggle and participation in the Resistance. “Marcella” packed, sorted, and delivered hundreds of packages of clothing and food for deportees, hosted escaped refugees, collaborated as a relay, collected and distributed clandestine messages. Two days after her husband's arrest she was "stopped" and taken to the Army Corps where they showed her "Giacomo" beaten and bleeding, with the intent of frightening her and inducing her to speak. They did not however betray one another. "Marcella" continued, together with other women, the assistance activity to the detainees in the camp and their families, re-establishing the contacts interrupted by the work of the Gestapo, both inside the camp and with the CLNAI of Milan, until the Liberation.

After the Liberation, Gilardi was for a short period Vice-Prefect in the transitional CLN government. He returned to Milan in 1952 for work, and after a few years moved his family there in 1954. He resumed attending the Methodist Church in via Cesare Correnti and then in via Porro Lambertenghi.

Gilardi died in 1970.

Sources

Bouchard, Giorgio and Aldo Visco Gilardi, Un Evangelico nel Lager, Torino: Claudiana, 2005.

Commune di Balsamo, 'Ferdinand Visco Gilardi,' https://www.comune.cinisello-balsamo.mi.it/IMG/pdf/Scheda_coniugi_Visco_Gilardi.pdf?2397/6ba64dc6fc4d69c01fa957c76dfa96f39839c63b