Arrigo Boldrini


Arrigo Boldrini was an Italian politician and partisan, President of National Association of Italian Partisans for almost 60 years.

Biography

During the Resistance

In 1943, Boldrini joined the then clandestine Italian Communist Party and has been one of the main promoters of the Italian resistance movement in Romagna. During the Resistance, Boldrini was the National Liberation Committee's reference man of Ravenna and leader of the 28th Garibaldi Brigade entitled to the partisan "Mario Gordini". During the Nazi-Fascist occupation, Boldrini was always at the forefront during the liberation missions in Romagna and was nicknamed Bulow, an homage to Prussian general Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow.
After the end of the war, his Brigade was accused of the massacre in 1945 of some surrendered RSI soldiers in Codevigo: he was accused by several right-wing researchers to be the principal mandator, but was completely cleared of charges by the Allied commands and italian magistrature.

After the War

Boldrini has embodied the ethical and political motives behind the struggle of the Italian Resistance, becoming one of the most authoritative and credible representatives at the institutional level: after being elected to the Constituent Assembly, Boldrini became the first President of the National Association of Italian Partisans, holding this office from 1947 to 2006.
Boldrini has been later elected to the Chamber of Deputies from 1948 to 1972 and to the Senate from 1972 to 1992, being a member of the Parliament uninterruptedly from 1948 to 1994.
In 1991, Boldrini joined the Democratic Party of the Left, and in 1998 he joined the Democrats of the Left until he decided to leave politics in 2005.
He died in his hometown Ravenna on 22 January 2008, at the age of 92.