Data Source Provider: IVESER
Gustavo Corinaldi, born in Scandiano (Re) on 6/03/1881, son of Rosa and Benedetto Corinaldi, was a passionate bibliophile and scholar of the history of Venice.
Due to the anti-Jewish laws of 1938 he was deprived of the right to practice his work at the Assicurazioni Generali in Venice.
On the evening of November 30, 1943, the order for the arrest and seizure of all property belonging to Jews, approved by the Council of Ministers of the Italian Social Republic, was broadcast by radio.
On December 4, 1943, Giuseppe Turcato, a close friend of Gustavo and leader of the Venetian Resistance, managed to obtain, with the complicity of a friend, a pass for an “authorized” visit to the Jewish retirement home, where Gustavo Corinaldi was.
The pass was only valid for two people, but having entered alone he could choose to save someone’s life by having him go out with him. He decided to offer a way out of what he now knew to be Gustavo’s tragic fate, but he refused to be close to his loved ones.
On the night of his capture, many Jews were locked up in the ghetto, then fenced with barbed wire; while the elders were placed in the Israelite Retirement Home. On December 5, 1943, the quaestor of Venice Cordova ordered the immediate arrest of the Jews. Corinaldi was arrested and taken to Santa Maria Maggiore prison in Venice. It was the police and the Republican Fascist Guard who scoured the historic center of Venice and arrested the Jews.
Later, Corinaldi was transferred to the Fossoli camp in Carpi. On 22 February 1944 he was deported from Fossoli to Auschwitz in convoy no. 8. Upon his arrival at Auschwitz he was murdered in the gas chambers.
Corinaldi during his life had never felt hatred towards anyone, not even for the Nazi-Fascists who persecuted him until he died. His figure remains etched in the minds of all Venetians today.
Source: IVESER, from “Nel 50^ anniversario della Liberazione 1945-1995 pagine della Resistenza veneziana”, by Giuseppe Turcato, la Beffa del teatro Goldoni, pp. 37 – 38; Jews in Venice 1938 – 1945. Una comunità tra persecution e rinascita , edited by Renata Segre, Il Cardo, Venice, 1995; Simon Levis Sullan, Italian Executioners. Scene dal genocidio degli ebrei, 1943-1945, Feltrinelli, Milan, 2015.