Pitigrilli
Pitigrilli founded the literary magazine Grandi Firme, which was published in Turin from 1924 to 1938, when it was banned under the antisemitic Italian racial laws of the Fascist government.
His efforts, beginning in 1938, to change his racial status were not successful, and he was interned as a Jew in 1940 after Italy's entrance into the war as an ally of Germany.
After Benito Mussolini's government fell in 1943 and the Germans began to occupy Italy, Pitigrilli fled to Switzerland, where his second wife (a Catholic) and their daughter joined him.
[2] It was Pitigrilli's marriage to a Jewish woman more than his own ancestry that initially made him the focus of the 1938 Racial Laws.
"[4] Claiming to seek exemption from the Racial Laws for his son, in 1938 Pitigrilli sought a ruling on his marriage from the Vatican, which held it had never happened, as it took place outside the church.
In July 1940 in Genoa, after he had already been interned as a Jew in Uscio, a small town nearby, Pitigrilli married the attorney Lina Furlan of Turin, who had handled his case with the Vatican.
His early experiences in Paris inspired his most famous novel, Cocaine (1921), published in Italian under his pseudonym of "Pitigrilli".
The New York Times wrote: “The name of the author Pitigrilli … is so well known in Italy as to be almost a byword for ‘naughtiness’ … The only wonder to us is that some enterprising translator did not render some of his books available in English sooner.”[6] Alexander Stille, who documented Segre's later collaboration with the fascist government (see below), wrote: Pitigrilli is a highly emblematic forgotten figure, a 'poète maudit' of Italy of the 1920s; his cynical comic satire describes the disillusioned world that followed World War I and proved fertile for the triumph of fascism.
"[6]In 1924 Segre founded the literary magazine Grandi Firme, which attracted a large readership of young literati.
Redesigned by César Civita, the magazine operated until 1938, when the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini banned publications owned by Jews under the anti-Semitic Race Laws.
Among his most well-known aphorisms are "Fragments: a providential resource for writers who don't know how to put together an entire book" and "Grammar: a complicated structure that teaches language but impedes speaking".
He and his lawyer, with the help of the intervention of Edvige Mussolini,[7] were able to have the place of internment changed to Uscio, a small town near the Riviera that was two hours from Turin.
Following his death, his Dolicocefala Bionda and L'Esperimento di Pott, two early novels, were re-issued in one edition in 1976 with an introduction by the noted Italian author Umberto Eco.
[3] Stille noted that the Fascist secret police used intelligence from these conversations to arrest and prosecute anti-fascist Jewish friends and relatives of Pitigrilli.
[2] Stille used many documents and accounts by members of the clandestine anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà (Justice and Freedom) operating in Turin.
