Onofrio Giglioli

Italian anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist shoemaker, born. When, on September 14, 1903, he married Maria Giuseppa Pelliciari, and between 1903 and 1926 the couple would have nine children – Rivoluzio (Revolution; 1903), Libero (Free; 1902), Siberia (1908), Equo (Equal; 1910), Seintilla (Spark; 1912), Pretesta (Protest; 1917), Sovverte (Subvert; 1920), Ribelle (Rebel; 1923) and Feconda Vendetta (Fertile Vendetta; 1926).

Onofrio Gilioli first entered police records in 1911 as a subscriber to the Bologna anarchist newspaper 'L’Agitatore'. In February 1912 he was again listed, this time as belonging to a "partito sindacalista" but was, in fact, active in the trade union struggles that inflamed the country at the time, such as the six month-long strike of the sharecroppers and cowherds of Rovereto, a key social conflicts most important occurred in the Modena plain during the "periodo Giolittiano".[1] At the time Rovereto sul Secchia was the centre of one of the most active and militant anarchist grouping on the Modena plain in the Emilia Romagna region (which includes Bologna), and Gilioli one of the main protagonists within that movement.

During the war he was interned in the military fortress in Crocetta Trevisana where he was put to work making boots for the military. Returning to Rovereto after the war, he continued his political activity until the beginning of 1921, when he decided to emigrate to the north of France, joining his son Rivoluzio who had been forced to flee to this country in May 1920 following the story of the theft of machine guns of Modena, which had led to the arrest of many of Modena's prominent anarchists and revolutionaries. He returned to Modena in January 1922 in order to relocate his family to France. In 1924 the Gilioli family moved to the Paris area, settling a two-storey villa that he had built himself in the Rue du Fer à Moulin in Fontenay-sous-Bois, Île-de-France. The house, which quickly came under constant police monitoring, became a meeting place for various anarchist groups and the Comité fédéral de la Fédération anarchiste des réfugiés would often meet there – records of which survive thanks to the anarchist and police informant Bernardo Cremonini. Amongst its regular visitors and guests were Gilioli's fellow Italian anarchist Camillo Berneri, Armando Borghi, Luigi Fabbri, Filippo Lusvardi, Vittorio Golinelli and Ettore Cropalti, and German and Russian comrades were also amongst those who found hospitality in the Gilioli family home.

One of Onofrio's early coups during his Paris exile was when he managed to win a contract with a large construction company by way of providing a route for 80 anarchist workers from Modena and Rovereto to emigrate to Fontenay-sous-Bois in France, thereby escaping internment or worse in fascist Italy. The Gilioli family were all active within the exile movement's political activities, and in addition to the better-known activities of Rivoluzio Gilioli, other brothers were no less militant: for example Libero, particularly active in the anti-fascist Legioni garibaldine della Libertà, set up in France on the initiative of Ricciotti Garibaldi to prepare for the armed overthrow of Mussolini and the Fascisti, but he sadly died a few years later, in 1927 as a result of complications from uraemia. Onofrio Gilioli was also directly involved in the movement.

In the period 1933-34, Onofrio himself participated in the initiatives of the Federazione anarchica dei profughi italiani (Anarchist Federation of Italian Refugees), as a member of the Federal Committee. In October 1934, he was one of more than thirty Italian anarchists residing in the Paris region who were the subject of regular checks by the French police and the following year he was active in the Comite Anarchico d'Azione Rivoluzionaria campaign against expulsions from France, something that faced many Italian anarchists then in exile in the country, and took part in the Comite's Italian Congress in Sartrouville on November 1-2, 1935.

At the beginning of 1937 he was appointed a member of the Comité pour l’Espagne libre in Paris. A few weeks later, however, he left for Spain, where his sons Equo – the first of the Gilioli family to leave for the Peninsula, who became the driver of the commander of the Italian Section of the Columna Ascaso – and Rivoluzio [2] and daughter Siberia were already taking part in the revolution there. After a short period of stay at the border post of Port-Bou, where his daughter was stationed, he carries out liaison duties between France and Spain, constantly moving between the two countries. In October 1940, together with his son Equo, he was included in the list of "dangerous subversives" handed over to the German occupation authorities by the Italian fascist police, so that they could be arrested and taken to Italy. However the Gilioli family had meanwhile moved south to Saint-Affrique in the Vichy territory. Apart from a short stay in a concentration camp, Onofrio suffers no other reprisals. After the end of the war he returns with his family to Paris, where he continues to reside, returning to Italy only for short visits.

Onofrio Gilioli died in his home in Fontenay-sous-Bois in 1968.