Michele Schirru

Michele Schirru (Italian pronunciation: [miˈkɛle ˈskirru]; (Padria, 19 October 1899 - Rome, 29 May 1931) was a naturalized American anarchist who was executed in Italy for his intent to assassinate Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini.

Biography

Michele Schirru was born in Padria, Sardinia on October 19, 1899, but raised in Pozzomaggiore. He attended school until he reached the 6th grade, then he was hired as a blacksmith's Apprenticeship. After his father left for the USA to work in New York City, Michele was admitted, self-taught, to the Maritime School of La Spezia, but he was forced to stop his studies because of pneumonia.

Decision to Leave Italy

He spent 14 months of active service fighting in WWI until the end of the war. He remained from the end of WWI until the day he came back home to Pozzomaggiore in May 1920, eighteen months later, as a soldier in the Italian Army.

Michele Schirru was disappointed by the abandonment of the PSI's factory occupations of 1919-1920, as he himself clearly expressed in his manifesto. Disappointed because of the... abandonment of these occupations, because of the betrayal of the PSI he describes how he decided to leave Italy. From his manifesto: "When the workers, submitting to the cowardly betrayal of the Socialist Party and General Confederation of Labour leadership, returned the factories to their legal owners, I was one of those who felt disgusted and humiliated at the missed opportunity and for the precious energies that had been squandered in vain. So I decided to expatriate, feeling that there was nothing more to be done in Italy."

He traveled to France, then in November 1920 he moved to the USA, and became a US citizen in 1926. There he made a living in New York City as a vendor at Arthur Avenue.