Mussolini, Elena Curti died: she was the secret daughter of the Duce

Benito Mussolini’s secret daughter died: Elena Curti, born a week before the ‘march on Rome’, died at the age of 99 in her home in Acquapendente (Viterbo). The funeral, Adnkronos learns, will be held tomorrow, Tuesday 18 January, in the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulcher of Acquapendente. After living in Spain for over 40 years, around 2000 the daughter never recognized by the fascist dictator had returned to Italy and settled in the country of northern Lazio. In 2008 she had lost her husband, Enrico Miranda, an aviation lieutenant whom the Duce decorated on the field for his heroic behavior as the first pilot in the battle of Pantelleria. Born in Milan on 19 October 1922 by the seamstress Angela Cucciati, wife of the fascist leader Bruno Curti, she officially knew that she was the natural daughter of Mussolini at the age of 20. “My mother confessed it to me point blank one evening after dinner – she said – I asked her if Mussolini was informed. ‘Yes, sure, but she prefers that you don’t know for now’, she replied. From that day on I spent whole days questioning myself. in front of the mirror with photos of the Duce and my dad “. Angela Cucciati, who died in 1978, became Mussolini’s lover in 1921, after meeting him to solicit the release of her husband, the squadron Bruno Curti, who was arrested for a fight with some comrades. Elena was admitted in front of her real father for the first time in 1929, at the inauguration of Umanitaria, a Milanese assistance institution: “Mussolini passed between two wings of a cheering crowd – he revealed in an interview – he stopped abruptly , looked at my mother for a moment, then bowed her head towards me, smiled and stroked my hair. I had the feeling of being chosen “. The first official meeting between Mussolini and his natural daughter took place on April 13, 1941 at Palazzo Venezia . Elena subsequently met her father about thirty times, especially during the six hundred days of the Republic of Salò: she was regularly received by the Duce on Thursday afternoons. Elena was part of the entourage of Alessandro Pavolini, the secretary of the Fascist Republican Party, and in that capacity she reported confidentially what she learned about the moods of the fascist leaders of the RSI. He demonstrated his attachment to his natural father to the end, so much so that he followed him to the tragic epilogue: when the fascist dictator was arrested in Dongo on April 27, 1945, Elena Curti was in one of the armored cars escorting the fleeing hierarchs. According to some reports, Claretta Petacci, lover of the Duce, would have asked for explanations on that female presence next to her Benito also making a scene. Arrested by the partisans, Elena Curti was transferred to Como and remained in prison for five months. Her mother testified before the assistant commissioner of Como that she was Mussolini’s natural daughter, avoiding her trial. ” I have never claimed to be the secret daughter of the Duce, even if my mother and Benito Mussolini himself suspected it. But I don’t see why after so many years I should flaunt this paternity right now, ” he told the Adnkronos news agency in 1998 after a woman named Claudia Apriotti turned to the judiciary asking to be declared Benito’s “ natural daughter ”. Mussolini and the Roman princess Sveva Vittoria Colonna. In 2003, after much insistence, Elena Curti published the book “The three-pointed nail. Splinters of memory of the secret daughter of the Duce” (Iuculano Editore). The first to tell the story of Curti was the journalist and writer Antonio Spinosa in the volume “I figli del Duce” (Rizzoli, 1983).