Edison and the Resistance

Starting with Giacinto Motta’s presidency and continuing under Pietro Ferrerio (from 1944 onwards), Società Edison could afford to support and protect a man such as Ferruccio Parri, known to the Fascist police and arrested on several occasions (Polese Remaggi Reference Polese Remaggi2004). Parri was initially part of the technical committee (research department) and later even of the military council of the Milanese National Liberation Committee (Comitato di liberazione nazionale, CLN). Under Motta’s leadership, Edison had already established itself as one of Italy’s leading electricity companies, playing a key role in the country’s energy development. During the 1930s, the company had consolidated its economic power through technological acquisitions and innovations, all the while maintaining a degree of autonomy from the Fascist regime, which viewed it with suspicion. As a result, the management took a critical stance on the regime, which helped to create an environment in which antifascist ideas could circulate – albeit discreetly.

Parri was the driving force behind the political activity within Edison, which tended towards azionismo and radical liberalism. His political engagement was clearly tolerated by the company’s Milanese management. In fact, as early as the 1930s, it was known – or at least suspected – that the latter was predominantly ‘antifascist’, starting with President Motta, who had given the company solid strategic autonomy, and continuing with managing director Giorgio Valerio (Segreto Reference Segreto2005, 298–300).Footnote ¹ During the Resistance, the environment created within Edison thus made it possible to provide protection and support to key figures of the antifascist movement, without the company being directly compromised.

A one-way trip from Italy to Switzerland

After 8 September 1943, Edison’s senior management found itself in an unusual situation. Between September and November 1943, its two managing directors – the engineers Vittorio De Biasi and Giorgio Valerio – were ‘forced’ to seek refuge in Switzerland. Why did both managing directors seek refuge in the Swiss Confederation? They did so for different reasons.

The information I have managed to retrieve about De Biasi is fairly convincing. He left the country for political reasons, given that he was a well-known antifascist (Scalfari and Turani Reference Scalfari and Turani1974, 100–101) and had been the subject of an arrest warrant in Novara. The Swiss authorities granted him political refugee status.Footnote ²

Like De Biasi, Valerio was also labelled an antifascist by the authorities. When questioned by Swiss officials, he claimed that he had fled the country for fear of being captured by the Germans, as he knew that people had already been arrested in Milan and that the German authorities were seeking to capture antifascists to use them as hostages. Furthermore, he was aware that managers of large companies had to obtain confirmation of their positions from the German consulate. Finally, Valerio added one more point: although he had been classified as ‘Aryan’ in Italy, German regulations would categorise him as Jewish because of his mother’s Jewish heritage. However, under the Nazi racial system, the mere fact of having a mother of Jewish origin was not in itself sufficient grounds for classification as Jewish, which made this explanation – at least on the face of it – not entirely logical (Ehmann Reference Ehmann and Laqueur2001).Footnote ³

Despite these considerations, Valerio crossed the border into Switzerland on 16 September using his laissez-passer, a document he had obtained about four years earlier because he owned a house in Lugano, which allowed him a 24-hour stay on Swiss territory. He entered Switzerland via the Ponte Chiasso border crossing, whereas his family – his wife, children, mother and nanny – joined him the next day, crossing the border illegally. At the time of their departure, his mother was at a family villa in Gironico, in the province of Como, whereas the engineer had previously been evacuated to Como with his wife and children. Both relocations had taken place before the bombing of Milan intensified in the summer of 1943, severely damaging their home in Via Borgonuovo in August (Caccianiga Reference Caccianiga, Marucci, Negri, Rastelli and Romaniello2004, 283).Footnote ⁴ Valerio and De Biasi were both granted political refugee status.Footnote ⁵

The importance of origins

Let us take a step back and reconstruct the Valerio family’s biographical profile to clarify the Jewish origins of Giorgio’s mother. There are two entries for the Valerios in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani: one concerns Giorgio, the other his sister Lucia. They tell us that Giorgio was born into a prominent family of the Lombard upper middle class. The son of Olga Kogan and the Milanese engineer Guido, a footballer and one of the founders of AC Milan, he was the eldest of four siblings. Like his brothers, Giancarlo and Mario, he was sent to university, graduating in electrical engineering. Lucia, on the other hand, became a famous tennis player (Perugini Reference Perugini2020; Mecca Reference Mecca2020). We know from the entries in the Dizionario bibliografico that Giorgio’s mother was of Russian origin, having been born in Odessa – now Ukraine, but at the time part of the Russian Empire. One interesting detail is the origin of her surname, Kogan, which is characteristic of the Ashkenazi tradition (typical of the Jewish communities of Central and Eastern Europe). It derives from the Hebrew word ‘kohen’, meaning priest; the replacement of ‘h’ with ‘g’ reflects a Russian adaptation, since Russian lacks the /h/ sound. In ancient Israel, the kohanim belonged to the Levi tribe and served as priests in the Temple of Jerusalem (Haran Reference Haran, Skolnik and Berenbaum2007). Although this does not automatically imply a religious or cultural identity on the part of Giorgio or his mother, it may indicate a possible lineage, albeit distant in time, consistent with the son’s statements to the Swiss authorities. From a religious perspective, if the mother were Jewish, would Giorgio also be considered Jewish?

To resolve this issue, I consulted the archives. These allowed me to resolve the question of Olga Kogan’s Jewish heritage, whose surname was sometimes transliterated as Kohan.Footnote ⁶ Olga was indeed born in Odessa, a city whose population was approximately one-third Jewish (Herlihy Reference Herlihy1986, 251–258), on 21 December 1882. Her father, Adolf,Footnote ⁷ was a Jewish grain producer and merchant originally from Odessa, while her mother, Lucy Deborah Leonino – daughter of Ippolito and Hannah Barent Cohen – came from a renowned and wealthy Jewish merchant family in England. Lucy’s family was related to some of the most prestigious Jewish banking and financial dynasties, including the Rothschilds in Paris and London, as well as the Halphen and Oppenheimer families (Sandri Giachino Reference Sandri Giachino2016, 27–28; Romani Reference Romani2020, 159–160).Footnote ⁸ Following the premature death of their parents,Footnote ⁹ the young Olga and her sister Helene (Nelly) were probably entrusted to their maternal uncle, Baron Charles Emanuel Leonino, who lived in Milan. It was there that they attended school and mixed with the city’s upper class.Footnote ¹⁰ Unlike their uncle and aunt, who remained Jewish,Footnote ¹¹ the sisters converted to Catholicism. Olga converted in 1903, a few days before marrying Guido Valerio,Footnote ¹² and their children were all baptised at birth.

So could Giorgio be considered Jewish? From a religious point of view, according to Jewish law (halakhah), Jewishness is transmitted exclusively through the mother, provided that she is Jewish at the time of birth, or through conversion to Judaism (giyur). Thus, according to the Orthodox interpretation, which is characteristic of Italian Judaism, if Olga was Jewish by birth, Giorgio would have been regarded as Jewish according to halakhah, despite her conversion to Catholicism before his birth (Di Segni Reference Di Segni1989; Calimani and Di Segni Reference Calimani and Di Segni2022, 3–12). But what does this mean from the perspective of Italian anti-Jewish laws?

Signs of exclusion

Following the introduction of anti-Jewish legislation in Italy in 1938, Giorgio’s father Guido was forced to prove his family’s ‘Aryan’ status. But what did this entail?

During the period of the so-called racial laws in Italy, the legal classification of ‘Jew’ was based on family ancestry and religious affiliation. It followed criteria rigidly defined by the Fascist regime: anyone with four Jewish grandparents was automatically classified as Jewish, without exception; the classification of those with three Jewish grandparents depended on the religion officially declared before 1 October 1938, when the racial laws were introduced. In those cases where both the individual and their parent born of a mixed marriage were registered as adhering to a non-Jewish religion and had not subsequently given ‘expressions of Judaism’ (e.g. joining a Jewish community, marrying a Jew or having children classified as Jewish), they could theoretically be considered ‘Aryan’. However, the reality was different. The racial classification department (Demorazza) ruled that anyone with at least 50 per cent Jewish ancestry was nonetheless to be considered Jewish, making it almost impossible for such people to obtain ‘Aryan’ status. Those with two Jewish grandparents were considered ‘Aryan’ only if they officially belonged to a non-Jewish religion on 1 October 1938, and if at least one of their parents of mixed origin was also registered as non-Jewish, without ever having performed acts that were considered Jewish practices. In all other cases, people were automatically classified as Jewish, including if they had no religious affiliation or only partial affiliation with a non-Jewish religion. Descendants of a single Jewish grandparent were generally considered Aryan, unless both they and their parent of mixed origin were registered with a Jewish community or had performed acts ‘attributable to Judaism’. Finally, anyone born to ‘Aryan’ parents and grandparents but who had converted to Judaism retained the legal status of an Aryan. However, further measures strictly regulated specific situations, which demonstrates the extreme arbitrariness and severity with which the Fascist regime applied racial discrimination (Sarfatti Reference Sarfatti2006, 131–133).

The preliminary investigation immediately established that Giorgio’s mother Olga was Jewish, and she was consequently classified as being of the ‘Jewish race’, despite having converted to Catholicism. Nevertheless, she was exempted from discrimination on grounds of ‘exceptional merit’, thanks to the fact that her husband had volunteered for the Great War and her son Mario had served for 15 months in the war in Ethiopia (earning the Cross of Merit).Footnote ¹³ By contrast, three of her children – Giancarlo, Giorgio and Lucia – were classified as ‘Aryan’ because two out of four grandparents were ‘Aryan’. Mario’s situation was different, as he had married Ricciarda Sarfatti, a Catholic of Jewish origin from Venice; her father, Riccardo, was a Jew who had converted to Catholicism, while her mother Lucia was a Catholic and ‘Aryan’. The investigation into racial classification concluded that Guido Valerio and his children belonged to the ‘Aryan race’. The classification also extended to his grandchildren, namely Giorgio’s children, with only one Jewish grandparent out of four, and Mario’s, with two Jewish grandparents out of four, partly because they had all been baptised at birth (Sarfatti Reference Sarfatti2006, 131–133; Asquer Reference Asquer2025). The only exception was Olga Kogan.Footnote ¹⁴

If the Valerios had been officially classified as Jews under the racial laws of 1938, they could have suffered serious consequences, particularly relating to their professional careers and social standing. In fact, Article 10 of Royal Decree No. 1728 of 17 November 1938 prohibited Jews from owning, managing or administering companies that were strategic to the defence of the nation and from holding senior positions in companies with more than one hundred employees. This meant that Giorgio Valerio, managing director of Italy’s largest electricity company, would have risked losing his job. Similarly, Giancarlo Valerio – a business graduate – could have faced significant restrictions in his career, especially if he had aspired to prominent positions in the economic or industrial sectors. Conversely, other family members – such as Mario, a surgeon, and Lucia, a professional tennis player – would not have been directly affected by these provisions. Still, they would have faced the progressive professional and social exclusions that Jews were subjected to in those years, such as expulsion from professional bodies, bans on practising certain occupations and increasing marginalisation within Italian society (Sarfatti Reference Sarfatti2006, 151–157).

Hence, for the Italian state, the Valerio family was ‘Aryan’ with the exception of the mother, who was ‘Jewish’ but exempt from the anti-Jewish laws thanks to the war merits of her husband and one of her sons. But how would the Germans who invaded Italy after 8 September 1943 view her position? What did they know about Giorgio’s wife? What had historiography written about her? His wife’s family and legal status directly affected the assessment of the risk to which the Valerio family was potentially exposed after 8 September 1943, given the criteria of the Nazi racial system and, to a lesser extent, that of Fascist regulation.

According to the entry on Giorgio in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Giorgio married Viviane Talan Lubovitch (of Russian origin) in 1935, the same year he became administrative director of Edison. Let us take a closer look at Viviane’s biography. The first detail that deserves attention is her compound surname, which can have various explanations. One possibility is that the second surname was added to prevent a surname now extinct in the male line from being lost, meaning that even a daughter could pass a lineage considered ‘important’ on to her children. This practice was often – though not exclusively – adopted by noble families, where the new surname was added after the original one. Another possibility is the adoption of an adult. In those cases, the adopter’s surname was placed before the original one, at least according to Italian law. Finally, it is also possible that the compound surname had been inherited, that is, without any subsequent changes or modifications. Which scenario applies to Viviane’s case? The Demorazza records contain no information that can clarify the matter. A further complication is the fact that Viviane had not provided any documents, as she was a ‘stateless’ Russian and the Soviet government did not issue civil status certificates to political exiles.Footnote ¹⁵ However, I have found some details in the Swiss records. Viviane was born in St Petersburg on 20 May 1911 to the lawyer Giacomo Talan (Jacob Talan’Footnote ¹⁶) and Gisèle Liwschitz (Gizelja Mihajlovna Livšic). She was raised in the Orthodox Christian faith and converted to Catholicism before her marriage. Her mother was born in Warsaw on 6 September 1889 – like Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire – and was an Orthodox Christian. Gisèle’s marriage to Giacomo did not last, and in 1914 she married Eugène Lubovitch (Evgenij L’vovič Lejbovič).Footnote ¹⁷ Hence, Viviane’s second surname was that of her mother’s second husband, and it is very likely that this addition was never formalised but used only informally.Footnote ¹⁸ To emphasise her detachment from the Jewish world, Viviane indicated ‘mother-in-law’ in response to an item on the Swiss police questionnaire asking whether she or her family members were of Jewish origin according to the legislation of their country of origin, and whether she or any relatives fell under that definition.

Although every piece seemed to fit together coherently, there was still a discrepancy. Fearing reprisals, Giorgio had sent his mother and children abroad to keep them safe in Switzerland, but this reconstruction left one point unresolved – a clue that remained in the background and which the sources available at the time failed to clarify. Once again, the wife’s surname might help to clarify things. The suffix ‘-vitch/-ovich’ in Lubovitch(Lejbovič) indicates a patronymic origin, thus revealing the potential Ashkenazi background of Viviane’s family (Beider Reference Beider2008, 153). Although I instantly noticed the phonetic similarity to the name of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement, this was just a clue – hardly enough to establish a potential lineage. Instead, I had to determine its relevance in relation to Italian and German anti-Jewish laws, but the research conducted so far had not provided any evidence. Quite the contrary: Viviane denied any Jewish origins – both for herself and her family – even in non-hostile contexts. The same version always emerged in the few (Italian and Swiss) sources that dealt with the topic of religion: Viviane and her parents were Orthodox.

While the research seemed to have stalled, something continued to be palpable. The sources and leads had dried up, and I had to find other possible venues to explore. Although the Swiss records offered a large amount of information, their vagueness made it difficult to launch a thorough and verifiable investigation. For example, it was known that Viviane had spent her childhood in various European countries and attended several boarding schools, but neither the names nor the locations were specified.

How was I to proceed? The solution was to focus on Viviane’s mother Gisèle and her life story, with the aim of identifying elements that could help me reconstruct her origins and, consequently, those of Viviane, according to the logic of Fascist and Nazi racist ideology. But with what tools? As in Viviane’s case, the information on the rest of the family provided by the Swiss records was too vague to allow for meaningful investigation. The most effective tools proved to be those used by genealogists, rather than historians. Genealogical search engines enabled me to trace almost all the sources that will be presented in the rest of the article (and some of those already mentioned) and to uncover new avenues of research.

A stateless person of the October Revolution

Gisèle’s second husband, Eugène, was born in Odessa on 15 September 1882. The second son of a wealthy middle-class family, he studied law before embarking on a career in industry and becoming a leading figure in pre-revolutionary Russia. He held prominent roles, including as a committee member and managing director of the Russian Union of Industry and Commerce, head of the legal department of the Central Committee for War Industry, member of the Supreme Economic Council of Russia, and representative of industrialists in the Provisional Parliament (Provisional Council of the Russian Republic) in 1917. Unlike Gisèle, Eugène was of the Evangelical Lutheran faith and had converted to the Orthodox Christian faith in 1929. From this second marriage, Georges (Jurij) was born in 1916.Footnote ¹⁹ Immediately after the October Revolution, the Lubovitch family – including Gisèle’s daughter from her first marriage – went into exile for political reasons: first to Switzerland and then, at the end of 1918, to New York, except for Viviane, who remained in Switzerland.Footnote ²⁰ After several years in the United States, the Lubovitch family settled in Paris, where Eugène pursued an industrial venture, founding in 1924 (together with the American industrialist William Averell HarrimanFootnote ²¹) the Société Franco-Américaine des Métaux et des Minerais (Coframet) and the Compagnie Francaise des fers et aciers (Coferaciers).Footnote ²² The French authorities granted the entire family – including Viviane and Gisèle – the status of political refugees.

The situation changed radically in the early 1920s. Following Soviet measures to strip emigrants of their citizenship, the family’s Russian citizenship was revoked. This condition only became fully effective and apparent during the 1930s, forcing the Lubovitch family to face statelessness (Lohr Reference Lohr2012, 148–150). To cope with this situation, Eugène bought a villa in Planken, in the Principality of Liechtenstein, where he lived with his wife and son for several months before deciding to rent it out. On 23 December 1936, they were granted Liechtenstein citizenship.Footnote ²³ To support his application for citizenship, Eugène obtained two letters of reference attesting to the aforementioned professional and political information: one from Aleksandr Ivanovič Gučkov, an Octobrist leader, former president of the Duma and Minister of War in the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, and another from Aleksandr Ivanovič Konovalov, an industrialist and progressive politician, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade and Industry in the same Provisional Government, both of whom emigrated to France after the October Revolution (Gleason Reference Gleason1983).Footnote ²⁴

Despite their new citizenship, the Lubovitch family continued to live in Paris, which remained the centre of their activities. However, Viviane was not involved in this process. She had acquired Italian citizenship through her marriage to Giorgio the previous year.

In the shadow of Nazism

With the outbreak of the Second World War and the German army’s invasion of France, the lives of Eugène, Gisèle and Georges changed dramatically. As the Germans were about to enter Paris, Gisèle and her son headed south, in search of a port from which to leave France.

In June 1940, chaos reigned in Bordeaux. The streets were packed with people trying to find a way to England in order to flee the Nazis. This had become virtually impossible, and the only alternative was to apply for a visa to Portugal. However, in November 1939, the Portuguese government of António de Oliveira Salazar had issued ‘Circular 14’, severely restricting visa issuance. This provision prohibited consuls from granting visas without authorisation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to specific groups, including stateless persons, refugees, Russians, expelled Jews and basically anyone who could not freely return to their country of origin, which further complicated the situation for refugees (Kaplan Reference Kaplan2020, 79–81). Gisèle and Georges travelled to Bordeaux, then Bayonne and finally Madrid, where they tried to obtain two transit visas for Portugal. They even appealed to Princess Maria Antonia of Braganza, a noblewoman in exile from the former Portuguese royal family, to help them secure the visas; the visas were approved by Salazar himself.Footnote ²⁵ Gisèle and Georges set sail from the port of Lisbon about a month apart.Footnote ²⁶ Eugène, on the other hand, had already been in Buenos Aires for business before the invasion of France, as his group owned subsidiaries in Argentina, and simply did not return to France. In the meantime, he had arrived in New York.Footnote ²⁷

About three years later, the Vichy regime took an interest in Eugène’s business affairs. On 1 September 1943, the General Commissariat for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat général aux questions juives, CGQJ), which was responsible for economic ‘Aryanisation’, the drafting of anti-Jewish legislation and the supervision of its implementation, opened a file on Eugène and his companies to verify whether he was Jewish and, accordingly, whether his properties could be confiscated (Joly Reference Joly2006). After a series of inspections and information gathering, the file was closed: the family was not Jewish. The racist commission based its decision on a certificate issued by the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, then under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople and operating within a framework of collaborative institutional relations with the Vichy regime. The dossier confirmed Eugène and his ancestors’ membership of the Orthodox and Lutheran faiths: Eugène, baptised at birth according to the evangelical Lutheran rite, had converted to Orthodoxy in 1929; his mother, too, had been baptised according to the evangelical Lutheran rite; his paternal and maternal grandparents were Lutherans; and Eugène’s wife was Orthodox. Hence, the Lubovitch family and their ancestors were proven to be of the Orthodox or Lutheran faith. Additionally, the dossier stated that Eugène’s name did not appear on the lists of worshippers at synagogues in France.Footnote ²⁸

Nevertheless, the case was not closed. While the certificate could be seen as evidence of compliance with specific administrative and classification requirements, it did not definitively prove the absence of Jewish ancestry in a genealogical sense. In fact, Gisèle and Eugène gave different statements in other administrative contexts, particularly in the United States.

Between ‘old’ and ‘new’ worlds

The New World was not all that new to Eugène. After living there with his wife and son for about two years, Eugène frequently returned to the United States for business reasons (sometimes with Gisèle). His company had both French and American roots, with partners also in South America. By using genealogical search engines, I have been able to reconstruct a network of journeys to and from the United States, as Eugène’s name was recorded in passenger lists every time he crossed the border. Similar to US lists or boarding passes, passenger lists contained biographical information and often also an indication of the declared ‘race’. Before the Second World War, both were recorded in this section as ‘white’ or ‘russian’. However, after the outbreak of the war, the couple declared that they were Jewish for the first time, something they had never done in Europe. In fact, I have come across several instances in which they described themselves as ‘Russian Jews’, a term used in American official documents.Footnote ²⁹ These statements should not be seen as unequivocal expressions of identity. Rather, they must be contextualised within specific administrative categories and migratory situations. Nevertheless, it remains unclear if Gisèle was referring to her birth or to her family lineage, as we have no other information.

However, genealogical tools have led me to Gisèle’s ‘Alien Case Files’ at the National Archives in Kansas City. This dossier opened a new line of inquiry. Thus, one form revealed the year of her first marriage (1906) and that, at the time, she was residing in Wiesbaden, Germany.Footnote ³⁰ With this information, and knowing the name of her first husband, I have managed to trace the marriage certificate issued in Berlin, where both Gisèle and Jacob were listed as being of the Mosaic faith: in other words, Jewish.Footnote ³¹

The importance of ‘race’

This factor significantly changed the Valerio family’s status. According to Nazi criteria, Giorgio would have been considered a first-degree Mischling, as two of his four grandparents – his maternal grandparents – were Jewish; his wife, on the other hand, would have been classified as a full Jew, being the daughter of two parents of ‘Jewish race’. This classification would also have had a direct impact on Giorgio’s status: under the Nazi racial system, a Mischling married to a person considered Jewish was reclassified as Jewish (Ehmann Reference Ehmann and Laqueur2001). Similarly, under Italian anti-Jewish laws, Giorgio’s membership of the ‘Aryan race’ would also have been called into question, since marriage to a Jewish woman fell within the category of ‘acts identifiable as Jewish practices’, hence subject by law to reclassification. The same applied to their children, who would have had three grandparents of ‘Jewish race’ (Sarfatti Reference Sarfatti2006, 132–133). According to this logic, the entire Valerio family would have been identified as Jewish by both the Fascists and the Nazis – hence subjected to Nazi-Fascist persecution.

From a religious perspective, Viviane’s situation is shrouded in mystery. We have no detailed information about her possible conversion, whether she was born Jewish or whether – and if so, when – she might have been raised within the Orthodox tradition or at some point embraced another faith. What we do know is that she was Orthodox until shortly before her marriage, which is confirmed by the fact that she was not baptised when she converted to the Catholic Church. This is an important detail because in the Catholic Church, converting an Orthodox believer does not require them to be baptised again, as it is considered an act of ecclesial affiliation rather than a new sacrament (Fanning Reference Fanning1907). However, given that Gisèle and her first husband were Jewish at the time of their marriage, and that Viviane was the couple’s second child (their first child had died a few days after birthFootnote ³²) and was born five years after their marriage, the period for a potential conversion of the mother – and therefore of the daughter – is reduced to a narrow time frame.

In limbo

The perception of risk that emerges from Giorgio Valerio’s statements is not merely the product of an individual assessment; it is the result of a network of political, professional and family relationships that gave him privileged access to information and a greater capacity to anticipate events than the average member of the population. As the head of one of Italy’s leading industrial firms, Valerio moved in circles where news circulated about arrests, the Germans’ changing attitude towards the economic elite and the normative differences between the Italian and German racial policies. Additionally, he could benefit from a long-established, consolidated network of transnational relationships, which included contacts in Switzerland and knowledge of international mobility, made possible by the economic and cultural capital he had accumulated throughout his career. Although this combination of relationships, resources and skills did not automatically determine his decision to emigrate, it helped to make possible and give concrete shape to a strategy of escape that, for others, would have been difficult to imagine.

However, one important question remains unanswered: what was the actual perception of risk among the members of the Valerio family? Were they fully aware of the danger they had avoided by emigrating to Switzerland? Or are we interpreting their choices retrospectively in the light of the Holocaust, thereby falling into a form of interpretative bias?

During the Nazi-Fascist persecutions, people often had a fragmented and uncertain perception of risk. Many underestimated the threat because of the progressive and changing radicalisation of racial policies and the normative differences between Italian and German criteria, and their hope that discrimination would not lead to extermination (Laqueur Reference Laqueur and Laqueur2001). The case of the Valerio family demonstrates that the ‘Aryan’ status granted by the Italian state did not guarantee safety under German rule, where the assessment of mixed origins blurred the line between protection and persecution.

In this context, the ability to interpret hints and make practical decisions was facilitated not only by the family’s access to privileged networks but also by their habitus, cultivated in cosmopolitan and cultured circles. Thanks also to the accumulated cultural and symbolic capital, this enduring disposition allowed for greater readiness in interpreting shifts in the political landscape and in tactically adapting one’s strategies for action (Bourdieu Reference Bourdieu1977, 78–87; Sarfatti Reference Sarfatti2023, 65–79).

As for Gisèle and her daughter Viviane, the arrival of the Nazis in Italy and France meant that Gisèle’s Jewish background, and consequently Viviane’s, would be revealed. Gisèle’s marriage to Jacob in Berlin, where they were both registered as Jewish, and the birth in Hesse of a son who died shortly afterwards, were pieces of a biographical puzzle that their persecutors could easily have assembled.

Understanding the danger

At this point, let us address the earlier issue of whether we are interpreting their choices through the contemporary lens of the Holocaust, thus attributing to them a perception of risk that they may not actually have had. Retrospective bias leads us to interpret the past with the knowledge of the present, imagining that anyone in a vulnerable position will inevitably have understood the risk of extermination. However, even among the victims, the perception of risk was not always clear or consistent between 1943 and 1944. Many European Jewish families were not fully aware of the scale of the extermination that was happening, even if the signs were becoming ever more obvious (Laqueur Reference Laqueur and Laqueur2001).

At the same time, the families themselves may have overestimated their safety, believing that the situation – however difficult – would not escalate to such an extent. The conviction that the racial laws would remain a form of discrimination but without leading to mass extermination was widespread among many European Jewish communities, until the deportations began to reveal the true nature of the Nazi project (Laqueur Reference Laqueur and Laqueur2001). Taking these considerations into account, their perception of risk seems multifaceted and complex: aware of the risk, perhaps they did not fully grasp the existential threat they were evading. Their flight may have been motivated by both the threat of war and an initial comprehension of racial persecution, but it is unlikely that they perceived the full gravity of the Holocaust as we know it today. This reflection compels us to acknowledge the limitations of historical analysis and the risk of projecting our current awareness onto past decisions, attributing a clarity of thought that the protagonists of this story may not have possessed. However, history is not judged with the benefit of hindsight, but with respect for the uncertainty, fear and limited information that forced people to make life-or-death decisions at the time.

The return

Until the liberation of Italy, De Biasi and Valerio organised and managed all relations with Edison’s Swiss partners (Motor-Columbus and Brown Boveri) from Switzerland, covering both day-to-day business activities and future industrial relations. At the same time, they organised and managed relations with the Allies, the National Liberation Committee of Northern Italy and the Volunteer of Freedom Corps. After all, Edison had not ‘been stingy’ in providing funding to the Resistance (Pizzoni Reference Pizzoni1993, 99, 228–230, 233–234),Footnote ³³ primarily with the aim of defending the industrial plants located in the Alpine valleys, which were the group’s main stronghold.Footnote ³⁴

Thanks to Edison’s role during the Resistance, the company was able to reorganise its management team without purges or worker control, thus ensuring the continuity of company management. This situation fostered a period of expansion and diversification, especially in the chemical sector, which was led by Valerio. His strategy led to the acquisition of Montecatini and the subsequent creation of Montecatini Edison, which later became Montedison, of which Valerio served – albeit for only a few years – as chairman. During the economic boom (1951–1961), Giulio Sapelli described the company as ‘Giorgio Valerio’s Edison’ (Reference Sapelli and Castronovo1994, 534–541), confirming the fundamental role he played in the leadership and development of the company (Salani Favaro Reference Salani Favaro2020).