I watched an old 1943 newsreel with a captured Fascist named Desario Birancati, but I can't seem to find any information on him he was the local leader of Catania, Italy. He was described as being widely hated. It seems, however, that he has been completely forgotten. Does anyone have any information on him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84WKoGVBCys
Desario Birancati
Re: Desario Birancati
The reason you can't find any info about him is that his name wasn't "Desario Birancati". Desario is not a given name, as far as I know, and there is not a single person in Italy whose surname is "Birancati" (see here: https://www.mappadeicognomi.it/index.ph ... i&s=Genera). As pretty common with Anglo-Saxon speakers, they butchered his actual name: Rosario Brancati.
I made a quick search, some links (in Italian) that mention him (mostly pages dealing with his son Vitaliano, who was a famous writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaliano_Brancati) are below:
https://books.google.it/books?id=Iyi7Rz ... ti&f=false
https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblic ... dette.html
http://win.agliincrocideiventi.it/09_gi ... ancati.htm
https://blog.maremagnum.com/le-prime-di ... -brancati/
https://www.docsity.com/it/vitaliano-br ... 1/4101622/
In short, Rosario Brancati was born in 1879 into a middle-class Sicilian family (he lived in Pachino for some time, not sure if this was his birthplace). He studied law and became a lawyer and an official in the Prefettura (a local subdivision of the Ministry of the Interior) of Syracuse. He married Maria Antonietta Ciavola in 1906 and in 1907 their first son, Vitaliano (who as I said, later became a renowned writer and dramatist) was born. Later they had another son, Corrado. Rosario is described by some of the pages I linked as a man of letters, with interest in art, as was his father and as his son was to become. Serving in various Prefetture, he was transferred to other Sicilian towns (Spaccaforno/Ispica, Pozzallo, Paternò, Modica) and eventually to Catania in 1920. So, it seems that he served in Catania for the entirety of the fascist period, eventually becoming the Vice Prefect. With the pseudonym of Il Ghirlandaio, he wrote articles for a local newspaper, Giornale dell'Isola (a conservative newspaper, it closed down in 1954). According to the La Repubblica article, Rosario "turned out to be one of the less compromised with the regime", and the Allies apparently thought so, as in January 1944, with the war still going on, US Army Colonel Charles Poletti (in charge of civil affairs within the Allied Military Government in Sicily) appointed Rosario Brancati as Vice Prefect of Ragusa (first link).
I made a quick search, some links (in Italian) that mention him (mostly pages dealing with his son Vitaliano, who was a famous writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaliano_Brancati) are below:
https://books.google.it/books?id=Iyi7Rz ... ti&f=false
https://ricerca.repubblica.it/repubblic ... dette.html
http://win.agliincrocideiventi.it/09_gi ... ancati.htm
https://blog.maremagnum.com/le-prime-di ... -brancati/
https://www.docsity.com/it/vitaliano-br ... 1/4101622/
In short, Rosario Brancati was born in 1879 into a middle-class Sicilian family (he lived in Pachino for some time, not sure if this was his birthplace). He studied law and became a lawyer and an official in the Prefettura (a local subdivision of the Ministry of the Interior) of Syracuse. He married Maria Antonietta Ciavola in 1906 and in 1907 their first son, Vitaliano (who as I said, later became a renowned writer and dramatist) was born. Later they had another son, Corrado. Rosario is described by some of the pages I linked as a man of letters, with interest in art, as was his father and as his son was to become. Serving in various Prefetture, he was transferred to other Sicilian towns (Spaccaforno/Ispica, Pozzallo, Paternò, Modica) and eventually to Catania in 1920. So, it seems that he served in Catania for the entirety of the fascist period, eventually becoming the Vice Prefect. With the pseudonym of Il Ghirlandaio, he wrote articles for a local newspaper, Giornale dell'Isola (a conservative newspaper, it closed down in 1954). According to the La Repubblica article, Rosario "turned out to be one of the less compromised with the regime", and the Allies apparently thought so, as in January 1944, with the war still going on, US Army Colonel Charles Poletti (in charge of civil affairs within the Allied Military Government in Sicily) appointed Rosario Brancati as Vice Prefect of Ragusa (first link).