Now We Know Who Was Shooting at Hemingway.
June 18, 2007
As of June 15, 2007, a photographic exhibit at the Museum of Catalonian History in Barcelona, Spain (I specify "Spain", because Italians spell the name with with two l's, and there also is a Barcellona in Sicily) is displaying the Spanish Civil War photographs of Italian Lieutenant Wilhelm Schrefler. Schrefler, who was born over the border from Austria in the South Tyrol, changed his name to Guglielmo Sandri when he enlisted in Mussolini's Fascist army. In 1936 his unit was despatched to Spain to the aid of El Caudillo, Generalissimo Francisco Franco. An amateur photographer Schrefler took many photos of his fellow soldiers, but they were lost until 1992 when a neighbour who was tidying the attic of the Shrefler home come upon the cache and began to classify and put them in order. There are reports of veteran of the campaign who have recognized their pictures. Shrifler died of wounds received in World War II. The exhibit is in tune with the rehabilitation of the losers, the soldiers and civilians on the right who fought against the Allies and the underground Resistance in the Italian Civil War launched when Mussolini was installed by his German allies at Salò on Lake Garda. You can read about it from the viewpoint of a Fascist volunteer in the novels of Giose Rimanelli. My nostalgic Sicilian barber explained to me only yesterday that what Italy needs is another strongman, that she had become a parliamentary democracy too quickly right after the war and had not enjoyed a maturing period under un uomo di polso (a firm and forceful leader) like Franco, head of state until his death in 1975.





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