Alessandro Sinigaglia

Alessandro Sinigaglia, battle name Vittorio (Fiesole, 2 January 1902 – Florence, 13 February 1944) was an Italian partisan during World War II.

Biography Sinigaglia was born in Fiesole to David Sinigaglia, a Jew from Mantua, and Cynthia White, an African American woman from Saint Louis. White had arrived in Italy as a maid in Villa la Fonte, owned by the Smith family, founders of the railways in Vermont. They worked in the same villa.

Professionally a mechanic, he served in the military as a submariner in the Navy. In 1924, he returned to Fiesole and joined the clandestine Communist Party.

In 1928, to avoid arrest, he fled to France and from there to the Soviet Union, where he attended a party school, worked as a mechanic again, and got married. He then moved to Switzerland and organized Italian communist exiles there.

Later, he participated in the Spanish Civil War aboard a Republican cruiser.

After the Spanish Republican defeat, in 1939, he sought refuge in France. He was arrested and handed over to the Italian authorities in 1941, who confined him to Ventotene.

He was released in August 1943, following the fall of Mussolini, and returned to Florence, where he organized and led one of the first GAP formations.

A few months later, he fell into an ambush set by the Special Services Unit of Major Mario Carità and was killed on Via Pandolfini in Florence.

Honors

Silver Medal of Military Valor (posthumous)