THE TRESCA MURDER
Antonini, Luigi
The Tresca Murder By LUIGI ANTONINI A FEW DAYS before the seventh anniversary on January 11 of Cask) Treaca's tragic death at the hands of "persons unknown" in the dimout of wartime Fifth...
...Meanwhile, the friends and co-workers of Carlo Tresca will pursue this case with unflagging vigor until the "persons unknown" are disclosed...
...Tito, if anyone, undoubtedly knows a good deal about Vidali's past activities...
...Carlo Tresca constantly raised these,questions, and many more —and Stalinists don't Tike people who raise embarrassing questions...
...He has been seen...
...Sure...
...Explaining his statement to the astounded Parenti, Tresca declared "Yes, Sormenti is here, and .he is preparing a blow...
...Tresca, by the way, had worked actively to try to break that case...
...No doubt Tito knows whereof he speaks...
...But pending the disclosure of information more substantial than that presented by the Brooklyn daily, the trail leading to the Comintern-Cominform hatchetman cannot be ignored...
...Man hattan District Attorney Hogan has written Norman Thomas, who heads the Tresca Committee, that his office will continue its investigations until the crime is solved...
...Which 'friend...
...No concrete facts were produced, no names exposed...
...On tho other hand, many foul deeds whoso threads lead to the Kremlin still remain as deeply shrouded in mystery as when they happened...
...Enea . • ." "Are you...
...After all, he had sufficient opportunity to acquaint himself with Sor...
...We are also aware that the Fascists hated Tresca as bitterly as did the Communists...
...Carlo said to me: "That 'friend' is here...
...Parenti told me recently that, a few days before the murder, Tresca indicated a desire to visit Boston, adding "I will come if I am not murdered first...
...When Vidali first cetnrned to Trieste from Mexico, he and Tito were still on close, terms, and in "lighter' moments, when they got together, they must have exchanged not a few .confidences on their mutual "elimination'' experiences in the service of the.Cum - intern...
...I Yet it was a Communist, in an Italian pamphlet published in New York attacking Tresca for his activities in the Poyntz affair, who declared: "If Tresca has lost his mind and sense of decency, then it is a duty to put an end to his detrimental activities...
...sure...
...Lulgi Antooini is first vice-president of the -International Ladies .Garment Workers Union...
...menti-Contreras-Vidali when they were both commissars with the International Brigade...
...To another associate, the Boston trade unionist Enrico Parenti, Tresca had expressed the same thought...
...Whenever the question of Communist connections with political crimes is raised, the Communists dash for the nearest pamphlet by Lenin or Stalin to "prove"—as the editor of the Italianlanguage Communist sheet in New York tried to recently—that ". . . the Communists had no interest at all in committing such a crime, which is contrary to their principles and is not part of their methods of political struugle...
...Tresca was universally known as an uncompromising foe of all totalitarian movements, Fascist and Communist...
...Krivitsky, a onetime NKVD agent who had broken with the "apparat," bad been disclosing Miine incriminating facts and asking some embarrassing questions about the Kremlin's murder machine...
...Just a few months earlier, Tresca, writing in his paper 11 Martello, had exposed the role of Sormenti-Contreras in "eliminating" Camillo Bernari, a libertarian fighter in the Spanish Civil War...
...This latest revelation must regrettably bo classified with the usual "sensations" that always seem to crop up around January 11 of each year...
...Perhaps Tito is one person who could, if he wished, shed some light on the crime per pet rated on Fifth Avenue that fatal January 11, 1943...
...SORMENTI-CONTRERAS is now known as Vittorio Vidali, chief whip of the Cominform in Trieste...
...WE DO KNOW THAT, with the fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, the details of crimes inspired by Mussolini and his henchmen were bared...
...His current target apparently is Marshall Tito, the new heretic...
...We know tho assassin Vidali, and we know his methods," the Titoists assert, charging that Vidali has organized a band of terrorists to "eliminate" the Yugoslav dictator...
...Though ald*ost a decade has passed, have any clues ever been unearthed concerning the shooting of former Soviet General Walter G. Krivjtsky in a Washington hotel room...
...From what we know of their methods of eliminating opponents, either kind of totalitarianism was quite capable of carrying out such an "assignment...
...admittedly, the only evidence available is of a circumstantial nature...
...How about the "removal" of Camillo Bernari in SpainJ And Leon Trotsky in Mexico...
...After all these years, do we know anything more about the disappearance of Julia Stuart Poyntz, one-time high Communist official...
...The Tresca Murder By LUIGI ANTONINI A FEW DAYS before the seventh anniversary on January 11 of Cask) Treaca's tragic death at the hands of "persons unknown" in the dimout of wartime Fifth Avenue, a writer on the Brooklyn EagU frontpaged a story allegedly revealing that the killers were known, and tlu*tr.thcy definitely were fascists...
...We have never intimated that the perpetrators of this crime could only have come from one source...
...I recall one of my last conversations with Tresca, on Christmas Eve, 1942, a few days before the crime...
...To those of us who have been trying to apprehend the assassins of the fearless libertarian editor and anti-fascist, and who are determined to put an end to the whole sinister pattern of political murders, .such news, if genuine, would have been most encouraging...
...I asked...
...We do not .knew...
...MORE IMPORTANT than Stalinist protestations is the fact that, just a few days before Tresca was "eliminated," a number of people saw on the streets of New York the notorious Stalinist trigger-man Enea Sormenti, alias Carlos Contreras, International Brigade Commander in Spain...
...In the interests of public welfare and anti-fascism, it is but selfnprotectton to eliminate from the community individuals who damage themselves and the society in which they live...
...Did Sormenti's "gne hand" direct Operation Tresca...
...Incidentally, the Daily Worker immediately seized upon the story in what appeared to be an especially frenzied attempt to divert attention away from the CP...
...Unfortunately, the Brooklyn Eagle story does not seem to have brought a solution any nearer...
...On this seventh anniversary, we salute the memory of Carlo Tresca, victim of political murder, and we pledge not to slacken our activities until America and the world are safe from the menace of political crime and its proponents...
Vol. 33 • February 1950 • No. 8
