Di Vittorio, Giuseppe

Born Aug. 11, 1892, in Cerignola; died Nov. 3, 1957, in Lecco. Leader of the Italian and international trade-union movement.

Di Vittorio was first employed as a farm laborer. He was a member of the Socialist Party from 1908 to 1923. From 1919 to 1926 he headed the strike movement and anti-Fascist struggle in Apulia. He was arrested in 1921 but released from prison before the year’s end because of his election to Parliament as a Socialist deputy. Di Vittorio joined the Communist Party in 1924. In 1926, following the establishment of a Fascist dictatorship in Italy, he emigrated to France. In Paris, under the name Mario Nicoletti, he was one of the leaders of the anti-Fascist struggle undertaken by Italian emigrants. Beginning in 1931 he directed the activity of the underground center of the General Confederation of Labor in Italy. He became a member of the Central Committee and Directorate of the Italian Communist Party in 1930. From 1936 to 1937, as a political commissar of the 11th International Brigade, he took part in the anti-Fascist war in Spain. In 1938 in France, he served as editor of the anti-Fascist newspaper of the Italian emigrants, La voce degli italiani. Arrested in February 1940, he was handed over to the Italian Fascist authorities, who in July 1941 exiled him to the island of Ventotene. He was freed in August 1943, after the collapse of the Fascist dictatorship. From 1943 to 1945 he was an active participant in the resistance movement; from August 1943 to May 1944, he was a member of the Central Committee of National Liberation. He was also one of the founders of the Italian General Labor Confederation, one of its general secretaries from 1944 to 1947, and general secretary beginning in 1947. In 1945 he became a member of the Executive Committee of the World Federation of Trade Unions; from 1945 to 1949 he was its vice-chairman and from 1949 until his death its chairman.