Four letters from Minister Alessandro Pavolini, founder of the Black Brigades, to Benito Mussolini; a handwritten copy of a telegram from Mussolini to the “Fuhrer of Greater Germany”; a copy of the memorandum of understanding between Mussolini and the German ambassador Rudolf Rahn concerning the sending of Italian workers to Germany. There are also these documents from the period 1943-44 among the 24 papers coming from the “Secretariat of the Duce, Reserved correspondence – Italian Social Republic” which were returned on July 28 to the Central State Archives. Among the papers received by the institution based in the Roman district of EUR also a document from the collection “Carte della Valigia”, or the bag that the fascist dictator always carried with him. The announcement of the restitution, informs beraking latest news, was given today by the Central State Archives, specifying that the 24 documents “had been held in their office by an official of the Prime Minister, presumably before these funds were paid. to the Central State Archives “.
“These are not documents that are completely unknown to the community of historians – declares Stefano Vitali, superintendent of the Central State Archives – since almost all of them existed a copy in the microfilms made by the Joint Allied Intelligence Agency, which in the immediate postwar period fascist archives and then returned the originals to Italy. However, only a few historians have had the foresight to integrate the consultation of paper documents with that of microfilms ».
The documents, almost all dating back to the period 1943-44, mostly concern the sending of workers to Germany. They include several autographs by Mussolini and various letters and notes for the Duce by Alessandro Pavolini, secretary of the Fascist Republican Party. The official who detained them at his office had been an Italian military internee in Germany – having refused to join the Republic of Salò – and it is likely that his interest in these documents derived from this. The children, having found the documents on the death of the deceased parent, contacted the staff of the Central State Archives to help them identify their provenance, and, once it was ascertained that they were documents coming from archival funds now preserved by the ‘Institute “of their own free will have decided to return them.”