Leo Valiani

Leo Valiani (9 February 1909 – 18 September 1999) was an Italian historian, politician, and journalist.

Early life Valiani was born Leó Weiczen in Fiume (now Rijeka), on the Adriatic Sea (then in the Hungary part of Austria-Hungary, now in Croatia), to a Hungarian Jewish family. In later childhood, Valiani lived in Trieste, and later in the Kingdom of Italy.

Career and activities A member of the Giustizia e Libertà organization, Valiani was sentenced in 1930 to five years in prison for anti-fascist acts he had committed in the 1920s. In 1939, after the defeat by the Nationalist faction of Francisco Franco, he fled to France where he was detained as a political prisoner in Camp Vernet together with Arthur Koestler, who wrote about it in his book Scum of the Earth, before later fleeing to Mexico. He adhered to the Radical Party from 1956 to 1962 and to the Italian Republican Party in the 1980s. He considered journalism as his true career. He wrote for the news weekly L'Espresso for 35 years and collaborated with Il Mondo and the Corriere della Sera. Sandro Pertini, the then Italian president, named him senator for life in 1980.