Over the years, many have wondered why Angelo Pezzana has been involved with Israel for so long and how this involvement began. This summer, I asked him if he would have liked to discuss this in an interview, and here, I present the conversation we had on the topic.
Angelo Pezzana founded Fuori!, the first Italian gay movement, in 1971. In 1977, he individually demonstrated in Moscow for Soviet film director Sergei Parajanov, who was imprisoned for being homosexual. This created a media sensation and highlighted the impact of spontaneous and individual activism. In Turin, Pezzana owned the Hellas Bookstore (founded in 1963), and later the Luxemburg Bookstore (from 1975), which was visited by renowned contemporary intellectuals such as James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Fernanda Pivano, and Gore Vidal. Pezzana began working with the parliamentary group of the Radical Party in the 1976 elections. In 2001, he founded the online newspaper Informazione corretta. He collaborated with the newspaper Libero from 2003 to 2010 as head of the Israel and Middle East section. In 1988, he co-founded the Salone del Libro di Torino with Guido Accornero. These experiences converged in his autobiography Dentro & Fuori: Una autobiografia omosessuale (1996), followed by Un omosessuale normale (2011). He founded the Fondazione Sandro Penna-Fuori!, that became the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori! in 2024.
Thank you, Angelo, for this interview. For as long as I have known you, I have seen you involved on Israel, and I have always wanted to ask you about the genesis of your interest in its history. Would you like to talk about this?
I must start by telling what my family was like: Catholic. We had a very simple relationship with religion. We went to Mass on Sundays, we celebrated Christmas and Easter, but there was no fanaticism between my father and mother. I had two sisters and a brother; I was the youngest.
My father was a grain industrialist. The Vercelli area was – and maybe still is – famous for its rice fields, so my father was always very aware of all the rice markets, nationally and, when he could, even non-domestically. My father, who did not know foreign languages, wanted me to attend boarding school in Switzerland for at least two or three years to learn them. This would have been a great help to him because I could have been close to him in expanding his work. I agreed because I liked the idea and found it interesting. So, when I was 15, I went to Switzerland to St. Gallen, where I began studying foreign languages.
Here, among various friends of different languages, I met a peer, the son of an Israeli diplomat. He asked me if I knew Israel and I replied that I was interested, even though I knew almost nothing about his country. He lent me a book in English on Israel’s history and said that we could have discussed it. I thanked him and started reading about three thousand years of history after the Romans destroyed the Jewish State, with the arrival of Christianity on the scene and with everything that the interaction between Christianity and Judaism meant.
When I returned to Italy, my first initiative was to send a registered letter to the Archbishopric of Vercelli, as I was born in Santhià. I requested to cancel my baptism, communion and confirmation. I did not want to have any other involvement with the Catholic religion, adding that I saw what they had done against the Jews, and I was sorry that I had not known earlier in those 15 years.
Did they respond?
Of course not, but I did not care. I started telling others about it two and a half years later, after I left boarding school and returned to Turin, where I completed my studies at the scientific high school Liceo Galileo Ferraris.
Before going to boarding school, during those years I realized the importance of sex in my life. During the summer we went to the seaside in Alassio in Liguria. I played with friends in the small woods, like all kids of that age. I could see that almost everyone was flirting with the girls, and I did not feel it; in fact, I was trying more and more to be mostly with my male friends. This made me start questioning myself. After I finished high school, I enrolled at the Università di Torino to study Political Sciences.
At that point, I was expected to join my father’s company, based in Santhià. However, when I saw how the work was done, I had an honest conversation with him. I said, “Dad, this kind of work does not really engage me. Especially now that I have learned foreign languages and seen more of the world that is of interest to me, the idea of staying in Santhià, a small town in the province, does not appeal to me.” My father, a very intelligent and attentive person, replied, “I believe that in life, you must have a job that you love, because if you do, you will surely be successful. But if you end up with a job you that do not like, it will be a disaster. So, I understand you completely. What would you like to do?”
I was around 17 or 18 years old, and I read a lot, and my father, even when I was still in junior high school, opened an account for me at a bookstore in downtown Turin, where I regularly bought books. Every month, I would present the bill to him, and he would happily pay it. I told him, “I would like to be a publisher.” He replied, “Give me some time, and I will think about it.” He then explained, “Becoming a publisher,” mentioning Mondadori or Rizzoli, requires billions, and I cannot help you on that scale. But why don’t you start with a bookstore?”
By the time I was 23, my father had already suffered two heart attacks, and he sensed that his life would not last much longer. He provided me with the means to take over a “drogheria” (a term that has almost disappeared today). It was one of those small stores that sold candies and various other items. There was one in the center of town, on a side street off Via Roma in Turin, right in front of the building with the daily newspaper La Stampa. My father spoke with the elderly owners, who agreed to let me take over the store, though not the walls, as they were rented. We transformed it into a very nice, elegant bookstore, even if it was a small one, and we decided to name it Hellas because, to me, the name seemed to evoke ancient Greece and carried some reflection on sexuality, including homosexuality. And this is how I began my career as a bookseller.
The book that remained quite close to me, however, was the one on the history of Israel that I read while I was in boarding school. Then, I began to explore classical Jewish literature, in particular works by important authors that I did not know yet. I started reading a lot of Eastern European Jewish literature. There were very few titles already translated into Italian: at that time, however, I also began traveling to America to browse the bookstores in New York. I started acquiring a significant number of classics, including many Jewish literary works, many not translated into Italian yet, both to sell in my bookstore and to read myself. This was also one of the specialties of my bookstore.
I must say right away that what fascinated me about Israel and Jewish culture was the history, not the religion. I left the Catholic faith not seeking out another religion. I cannot say that I am an atheist, but I am an agnostic.
Of course, following literature, I continued to be interested in Israel, because I was curious, I wanted to go and see what the Jewish State was like. I visited occasionally, intrigued to observe its society firsthand. Then, I skip a few years until I also started writing in a few newspapers on topics related to Israel and Judaism. In 2003, my collaboration with the newspaper Libero began. I was sought out by editor Vittorio Feltri, who read my articles in other newspapers, to invite me to write about Israel and the Middle East. I worked with Libero for nine years. This increased my knowledge of this country and the feeling of feeling that I was part of it.
Then, I also have a funny story to tell. During my trips New York, my favorite bookstore was J. Levine Books & Judaica, on a predominantly Jewish side street off Fifth Avenue. I would buy many books that were not yet available in Italy and ship them back in suitcases using sea freight.
One of these times, Isaac Singer, one of the most famous Jewish writers in the world, came in. I was impressed. A few days later I returned for more purchases. The bookstore owner, who had known me for years by then, told me that Isaac Singer asked him what my name was, intrigued that I was buying all those books. It was Singer’s habit to ask him for a list of Hebrew first and last names because when he wrote a new novel, he had to find new names for the characters. He asked what my name was. Upon hearing the name Pezzana, he said that certain Jewish surnames in Eastern Europe ended in “ana.” Evidently, he must have thought that I was Jewish. He commented no more when the bookseller told him my name.
A few years passed, and a new book by Singer came out in Italy. As always, I read it right away, and came to the page where there was a cab driver that the protagonist of this book called to go on errands. Since cabs in New York all have tags with full names, he made up that the cab driver’s last name was “Pezzana,” so I ended up as a cab driver in a Singer novel.
This story is curious.
Now there is the entire part of anti-Semitism that I have been involved with. Everything that is happening in the world is terrible: the hatred against Jews and everything taking place in the world today is horrifying, the world seems to be turned upside down. Hopefully, this can be fought, but it is very difficult.
Within all this commitment of yours to Israel, what is the focus of your website Informazione Corretta? What impact did it have and will continue to have?
In 2001, I was already very close friends with Fiamma Nirenstein. She went to South Africa at an international conference, where, however, the hatred against Israel and America became terrible; they immediately left this conference, a few months before the destruction of the Twin Towers. I went to Fiamma’s house in Jerusalem: we decided to do something, maybe a newspaper, because even the media was not reporting the facts correctly. Making a newspaper required great high capital available that we did not have. Then, we decided to have an online newspaper and came up with Informazione Corretta. Since then, each morning we had a daily issue with about ten pages on what was going on with Israel and Judaism, including anti-Semitism and terrorism, because they were continuing to spread very strongly.
I will quote Marco Pannella, who was a great friend and taught me politics, just as Fernanda Pivano taught me literature. They were my mentors. Pannella once told me that people complimented him by calling him a great pacifist. He responded that he was not a pacifist at all, because peace only comes after, meaning that first there must be justice. I understood that you always had to be against pacifists because, not surprisingly, even all terrorists talk about peace.These are the kinds of topics that we also cover in Informazione Corretta because they are quite relevant. I always had a deep connection with Marco Pannella, and I miss him greatly; he died in 2016.
I remember that the Luxemburg Bookstore suffered an attack and various demonstrations about Israel took place there.
I am often asked in interviews whether I had more problems because of my commitment in the homosexual movement, in Fuori!, or in defending Israel and fighting against everything that is anti-Semitism. I always say that on the issue of homosexuality, even with those who disagreed and still belonged to an outdated upbringing, I never had situations of violence against me. Instead, what almost cost me my life is exactly what I did regarding Israel.
In 1988, a bomb was thrown in the Luxemburg Bookstore because, being an adviser for Marco Pannella’s Radical Party in the Piedmont Region, I organized a series of meetings on topics concerning Israel, inviting historians and experts. Then, a week-long boycott of the bookstore began. Protesters stood in front of the entrance, saying not to enter a bookstore whose owner had the blood of Palestinians on his hands. This was serious, and even two or three analysts understood it and wrote about it in the newspapers, adding that it could lead to worse consequences. In fact, a few days later at night, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the windows of the bookstore, burning down a third of it. The perpetrators were never caught.
Around the same time, one evening, I was distributing leaflets along the Po River as a Radical, opposing drug use. When they saw that I was there, a group of violent individuals attacked me to throw me into the river, off a very high cliff, also punching me in the head, and breaking my glasses. Fortunately, I was there with many of my other Radical friends, who managed to rescue me, thus preventing them from throwing me into the Po River. This had nothing to do with homosexuality and I realized just how important Israel was in my life and that it was related to me and how I acted.
And now too, with everything that is taking place, where Israel is guilty to the entire world, and it receives hatred for invented things: just look at Gaza and all the lies they spread, blaming Israel. Unfortunately, many LGBT people, obviously those on the left, are also involved, declaring that they are going to Gaza to bring solidarity to Hamas, that throws homosexuals off buildings. However, to attack Israel, they go as far as to support the terrorists. This, unfortunately, also happens at Pride events, where Jews and those carrying the Israeli flag have decided not to participate anymore. Instead, there were those with Palestinian flags who did not allow others to be there, and this is serious.
Unfortunately, these homosexuals are like some feminists, who once fought for women’s rights and today they no longer speak about what is happening against women in Arab countries. In Iran, how do women live? They are all covered from head to toe. There is not a single feminist speaking out about this. On the contrary, they all remain silent. Now we have homosexuals who march but say nothing, aligning themselves with those who kill them. These are the left-wings. Someone has to say it, and I say it without fear.
Cover image: Angelo Pezzana, Luxemburg Bookstore, Turin, 2016
Photo Credits © Courtesy of the Fondazione Angelo Pezzana-Fuori! Archives
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