One-Time Refugee From Fascists

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30636, 30 December 1964, Page 9

One-Time Refugee From Fascists

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) ROME, Dec. 29. Giuseppe Saragat, a former bank clerk and a devout antiCommunist intellectual, takes the oath today as Italy’s new President. Mr Saragat the present Foreign Minister, joined the Italian Socialist Party shortly before Mussolini’s rise to power in 1922. Four years later he became a refugee of the

Fascist regime, settling first in Austria, then in France, escaping from Paris just before the Nazi occupation. He returned to Rome in 1943 but he was arrested and handed over to the Gestapo who imprisoned him. But Mr Saragat, who had been born the son of a Turin magistrate, escaped and joined the proallied Italian Government in South Italy in 1944 as Minister without portfolio. In April, 1945, he returned to Paris, this time as his country’s Ambassador, and in

the following year headed the Italian constituent assembly which drafted the republican constitution. When the Socialist Party split in 1947. Mr Saragat headed the moderate wing which disagreed with the party’s alliance at that time with tie Communists. He is leader and the dominant personality of the Social Democrat Party, which is smaller than the Socialist Party and has 33 members in

the Chamber of Deputies and 14 in the Senate. Since 1947, Mr Saragat has served in several Italian Governments; last December he joined the Government of Premier Aldo Moros’s CentreLeft Administration as Foreign Minister. A widower whose wife died several years ago, the new President has a son, Giovanni, in the diplomatic service, and a daughter. He has a wide knowledge of philosophy, loves poetry, makes long walks in the mountains and likes to take his two grandchildren to the zoo.