Umberto Marzocchi was a life long anarchist. A shipyard worker in La Spezia, he was involved in the revolutionary events in Italy in the years just after World War One. He helped organise the Arditi del Popolo (The People’s Commandos) which physically fought with Mussolini’s fascists. Driven into exile in 1922, he played an active part in the exiled Italian anarchist movement in France and Belgium.
In 1936 Marzocchi went to Spain and fought with the Italian Column of anarchist volunteers. The pamphlet describes his experiences in Spain and the organisation of anarchist militias. It recounts the fighting on the Huesca front and the battle of Monte Pelado. It remembers the outstanding anarchist comrades like Antonio Cieri, Aldo Perissini and many others who fell in fighting the Francoists, and Camillo Berneri, “anarchism incarnate” as Marzocchi calls him, murdered by the Stalinists in 1937.
The pamphlet describes the Communist provocation that led to an attack on the telephone exchange in Barcelona controlled by the anarchists, and the subsequent murder of anarchists like Berneri, and of members of the dissident Marxist party POUM.
As Marzocchi says: “ The Italian anarchists’ contribution to the Spanish revolutionary experiment was wholehearted, unselfish and sincere: a veritable poem of generosity, fraternal solidaroity, audacity, consistency of ideals and sublime resolution…”
---
Read more about anarchist organisation against fascism including Edelweiss Pirates, FAUD underground, Zazous, 43 group, Arditi del Popolo in our latest pamphlet, Resistance to Nazism, available in print for £2 including postage (£2.50 outside of UK) from BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX, England, UK or online via http://www.afed.org.uk