Books, Virman Cusenza redeems the story of the socialist Enzo Paroli who saved the fascist Telesio Interlandi from oblivion

A “hero” to be rediscovered, or better known, because he made a courageous act in hiding, therefore worthy of being redeemed from oblivion: it is the story of Enzo Paroli, the anti-fascist who saved the journalist Telesio Interlandi, Benito’s favorite director Mussolini, first at the helm of the extremist daily newspaper “Il Tevere” and then of “Defense of the race”, the magazine founded in 1938 with the aim of conducting the anti-Semitic campaign and paving the way for the racial laws of the fascist regime. The journalist Virman Cusenza, who directed “Il Mattino” and “Il Messaggero”, now Fremantle’s current affairs consultant, took on this task with the essay “Giocatori d’azzardo”, published by Mondadori in the prestigious’ Le Trails. The story of the lawyer Enzo Paroli, the anti-fascist who saved Mussolini’s journalist, captured the interest of Leonardo Sciascia (1921-1989) in the last years of his life: the author of “The day of the owl” to the “fraternity human “by Paroli and wanted to dedicate a book to his” heroic “gesture. A feat that was completed by Cusenza, telling the story that has been ignored for decades thanks to extensive archival research and unpublished documents. “Even today, in a country that has not fully come to terms with its own history, the figure of this lawyer deserves to be removed from oblivion “, underlines Virman Cusenza in the premise that opens his book. In Brescia in November 1945, the lawyer Enzo Paroli, socialist and anti-fascist, meets in the crowded prison of Canton Mombello the prisoner Telesio Interlandi, accused of “collaboration” with the Nazi invader, the journalist who for the entire Fascist period had been Mussolini’s ventriloquist, also following him in the epilogue of the Republic of Salò. Tired, tried, Interlandi was terrified at the idea of ​​facing the responsibility of having been one of the symbols of the fascist regime in a courtroom. Paroli appeared uncertain, aware of the risk and hazard that involved taking up the defense of a fascist who was not at all repentant, of a journalist who had built his fortune on racism, not only economic, of an ‘uncomfortable’ intellectual, often disliked by the hierarchs of the party but always protected and generously financed by Mussolini. Yet, in the end, Paroli accepted the mission. Indeed, taking advantage of the inexplicable and daring release of the prisoner, he decided to hide him with his family in their home for over eight months, until the case was closed. What prompted a respected lawyer to jeopardize his career to keep a fugitive from justice? What did he see in that man hunted down by his own faults? A loser, of course, a vanquished who found himself on the wrong side of history, but who for this very reason deserved to be defended, and perhaps saved from the machine gun bursts of some improvised executioner. Inspired by a feeling of pietas, Paroli’s gesture – in the reconstruction of Cusenza – appears to be an act of humanity, of solidarity that unhinges dividing lines, iron curtains and walls, even if it has nothing to do with forgiveness. Virman Cusenza in that autumn of 1945 a rare encounter took place, one of those that change lives. The esteemed lawyer, son of art, Enzo Paroli would have all the requisites for the halo that would facilitate his ascent into the new order of things after the Liberation, but he prefers to live on the edge of danger, says Cusenza. He alternates flashes of normal life in the law firm with clandestine escapes with the sister of the worst squad in the area. But his real secret are the daily forays into the basement that he has used as a refuge, saving the number one plague of the moment: the super-freezing Interlandi and his family. This story was discovered by Leonardo Sciascia, who wanted to make it one of his fulminating works in which history and tale intertwine, until they become inextricable and inseparable from each other. But the disease prevented him. Cusenza had access to the folder of the great writer who by now thirty-three years ago had been rising thanks to the contributions that, once the news was leaked, rained down from various parts, whether they were asked or unsolicited. “It is the fidelity to the core of that story, to that ethical engine that had pushed him to try the adventure, which supported me in this work. ‘Heroic’, to put it in Sciascia’s words, the gesture of Paroli”, writes Cusenza. “Equally ‘subversive’ that of the Sicilian writer of trying to tell it. I am aware that only the discovery of the original and unpublished documents, as well as access to a direct story, and not filtered by interested witnesses, could restore authenticity to facts that our memory is able to classify only in black and white “. In the book” Giocatori d’azzardo “appear for the first time – explains the author – the cards that tell, even more than the story of the two protagonists, a glimpse of Italian history in the crucial years of the civil war. They help us understand why a courageous lawyer, who was born from a founding father of the Socialist Party and whose anti-fascist faith he shares, to the point of going to jail in his place, decides to take on the defense of a well-known director who orchestrated anti-Semitic propaganda of the regime and, with its newspapers, was the most advanced phalanx. To the point of being disliked even by the hierarchs. Today we have a few more pieces of truth to understand what may have convinced him to hide the fugitive, even in his own home for eight and a half months (with his wife and child), to avoid a trial with a probable death sentence or a hail of machine gun on the street: to the point of personally running the risk of ending up in jail, losing the profession if not the same life in the face of a more than possible retaliation at the hands of the most zealous executioners of the moment. Difficult to understand, after more than seventy years, if we stick to the more usual behavior among men. And the time that has elapsed only amplifies the exceptional nature of the gesture made in that context “. In the opinion of Virman Cusenza in this story” we are witnessing the triumph of an act that still appears to us to be completely free and therefore out of the ordinary. Not only is the gesture made by the lawyer Enzo Paroli complicated to understand, if not by making an effort of identification that most find it difficult. But it is also exceptional compared to the very recurring ‘sense of justice’ that has been opportunistically ridden over the centuries. “” It is that reversal through which a leap is made that produces miraculous effects for those who become its protagonists. I help the winner by unloading yesterday’s won and thus absolve my conscience, acquiring merits that can be spent in front of the community that gladly recognizes them, in order to free itself from uncomfortable feelings of guilt – notes Cusenza – What could be better than this shortcut to comfortably and save the page? Paroli chooses the opposite path: more inaccessible and not at all profitable. And it is for this reason that his gesture still makes him a man to be saved from oblivion “. (By Paolo Martini)