ANNIVERSARY Who Killed Carlo Tresca? NORMAN TJIO,llAS ci ha ir1ofo10 l'arlicolo elle 11ubblid1iat110 ;,, ricor,/o di Trt>sca. Lo ricevemmo troppo tar,li ,wr pubblicarlo 1111110 ,cor,o u,1111ero. Lo 11ubbliclaia1110 in ir1g/1>,e. La ma««ior parte dei 110,tri lettori cono1co110 la Uug•ut,. l'otranno far leggere l'articolo agli amici amPricani cl.e non hm,no ,limP11tica10 <1uel <lelitto. Tlw11ws e' •tato il pre,itlente del Carlo Tr,,ca ~lemorial Committee, fino tlnlla sua Jorma::ioue. Non ha dato tre1ua alle autorita' che ,i erano aHunto il compito ,li giungert- t1I bmulolo ,/ella ,natana. Quel Co111itato 110n h,, la,ciato pauare iuo,servata 11eu11n incitlPnte che offriue il motivo per una prote,ta. Noi ,iamo stati a fiauco del comitato. Ogni s/01 :;o per /nre luce e' ,tata inutile. Nondimeno ,i continua a martellnrt- . .. On January 11th, lt will be 17 year~ since Carlo Tresca was shot down on a darkened street outside the bullding in which he had his office. The best effortl3 of his friends, among them a committee of which I was chalrman, and the not-so-good efforts of the District Attorney's office, have been unable to bring home the guilt for this crime to any individua! or group. It is almost the unanlmous convictlon of ali o( UIS, including the pollce, that the crime was polltically motivate<! either by communist or fasclst sympa.thy and allegiance. Even if the responsible person or persons acted out of persona! hatred or anger or in revenge for some ISharp crltlcism from Tresca's tongue or peon, the underlying reason Cor thelr anger would have been round in the politica) sltuation and thc hatred or both fa<sclsts and communists against Carlo. Most of us believe that the trlgger man wais ,probably Carmine Galante, a relatlvely small-time gangster wlth a crlmlnal record before the assassination and evi) notork!ty in recent years. But the ,pollce never got evidence sufflcient to bring hlm to justlce. If he was the trigger man he ected for others. A pamphlet published by our Tresca Memoria! Commlttee In October 1945, entltled Who Killed Carlo TrescM, gave pretty falrly the rea.sons and the facts suggestlng either communist guilt or fasclst. Nothing conclusive was added In the years of work whlch followed. The partlcular timing of the crlme always seemed to me to make dt more logica! to suspect communist than fasclst lnstlgatlon, possibly through the communlst operator and man of many names, Contreras-Sormentl-Vldali, whom Tresca had seen in New York a few weeks earller and concemlng FEBBRAIO 1960 N0Rì\1AN TBOMAS whom he had told hls Criends, "Where he ;s, I smell murder. I wonder who will be the next victim." By January 1943, Itallan-Amerlcan sympathizers wlth fasclsm had pretty well deserted Mussolini's sinking shlp. The communists, however, were Oourlshing, and Tresca had incurred their hatred by hls denunclation or their conduct in generai and in !ij)eciflc cases, notably the dlsappearance of Juliet Stuart Poyntz. But certainly I can't do now what for years our committee tried to do; that ·1s, bring to justlce the perpetrators or this foul crime or even formulate speclflc cha11ges of gullt agalnst anyone. I can, moreover, remind myself and others how much we owe Carlo Tresca and hls memory not only in terms of our friendshlp for this gay. high-splrlted rebel, but !or hls enormous servlce In flghtlng an lmported Jtalian fnscism In the streets 11
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