Marrone Calogero

Marrone, Calogero Calogero Marrone was born in 1889, in Favara, Sicily. He served in the Italian army during World War I, reaching the rank of sergeant. After the war he was secretary of the local veterans office. With the advent of fascism, he refused to join the National Fascist Party and drew the ire of the local leadership, who had him imprisoned for several months. In 1931 he won a tender for a position at the municipality of Varese, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. He moved with his wife, Josephine, and their four children to Varese. There he climbed the professional ladder at the municipality and became head of the Varese municipal population registry. From this prominent position he was able to come to the aid of Jews who arrived in Varese after the German occupation of Italy on September 8, 1943. Convinced of the importance of resistance to the German occupation, he belonged to an anti-fascist cell in Varese. He issued false identity papers or legalized false documents presented to him by refugee Jews, thus enabling them to have residence permits and food rations and evade the roundups of Jews. Among those who received Marrone’s help were Rosanna and Renzo Russi, who were given false papers to help them cross the border into Switzerland. Italian siblings Laura and Ferruccio Pizzo, as well as Polish natives Szia Amsterdam and his wife, were given new identities that allowed them to live in small villages until the end of the war. In late 1943 someone betrayed Calogero Marrone to the authorities, and he received a notice from the mayor of Varese on December 31, 1943, informing him that he was being suspended for supplying false papers to various individuals. Perhaps one of his employees reported on Marrone’s activities—how he told them to fill in a document with the details that he supplied or that he took blank documents and filled them in himself. On January 4, 1944, Don Luigi Locatelli, a canon of the Basilica of St. Victor, arrived at Marrone’s apartment to warn him that his arrest was imminent and that he should escape to Switzerland. Despite the warning Calogero did not try to escape, because he had given his word to the mayor that he would cooperate in the investigation relating to him and, above all, because he wanted to protect his family from retaliation. On January 7, 1944, Marrone was arrested by two SS officers on charges of collaborating with the resistance, aiding in the escape of Jews, and violation of official duties (all crimes punishable by death). At first detained in the Miogni Prison, he was later transferred to various internment facilities. Eventually, he was sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, where he died on February 15, 1945. There is a plaque dedicated to Calogero Marrone in front of the registry office in Varese. On October 21, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Calogero Marrone as Righteous Among the Nations.