Nuto Revelli

After going through Fascist Italy’s educational system, Revelli became an officer in the Italian army’s mountain division and was sent to the Eastern front to fight the Russians in July 1942. 

For his role in the retreat from the Don he was awarded two silver medals for military valour and a promotion to lieutenant. On 8 September 1943, he was in Cuneo, recovering.

He was among the first organisers of the Resistance and in February 1944 he joined the Italia Libera band of Duccio Galimberti in Paraloup, then he led the Giustizia e Libertà ‘Carlo Rosselli’ brigade in Italy and France. 

In the post-war period, the need to bear witness to what he had experienced drove him to a task of narration and research that would over the years become a true monument to national memory and an example of civic commitment. 

His experiences of the fascist war and the partisan struggle, and his interest in history seen ‘from below’ led him to collect testimonies from veterans and from the Cuneo peasant world. During his long years of work, he flanked the writing of books with the activity of bearing witness in schools. 

Primo Levi spoke of testimony writing as an ‘impegno del dopo’ (an obligation of afterwards). He used this term to unite his own work with Nuto Revelli and Mario Rigoni Stern. 

Revelli recalls: “We had a ‘common matrix’ Primo Levi, Mario Rigoni Stern, and I, so Primo always said, even though we had lived different experiences [...] The ‘common matrix’ that Primo was referring to? Our converging war experiences, but above all our commitment to the aftermath [sic], that not wanting to forget, that wanting to bear witness at all costs”.

His books, all published by Einaudi, include La guerra dei poveri (1962), La strada del davai (1966, 2010 and 2020), Mai tardi (1967, 2008 and 2020), L'ultimo fronte (1971 and 2009), Il mondo dei vinti (1977 and 2016), L'anello forte (1985) Il disperso di Marburg (1994 and 2008), Il prete giusto (1998, 2008 and 2021), Le due guerre (2003 e 2005), Il popolo che manca (2013), Il testimone. Conversazioni e interviste. 1966-2003.