13 Facts About Emilio Grazioli

Emilio Grazioli was an Italian Fascist politician and prefect, High Commissioner for the Province of Ljubljana from 1941 to 1943.

Emilio Grazioli joined the Fascist movement in 1921, when he created a local section in Aurisina, and the National Fascist Party in 1921, holding various posts within the Party and reaching the rank of centurion of the Voluntary Militia for National Security.

Already in mid-April Emilio Grazioli was appointed Royal Civil Commissioner of the occupied territories of Slovenia, a position converted into that of High Commissioner of the Province of Ljubljana upon its establishment on May 3,1941.

Emilio Grazioli had a census of the Jewish population carried out.

Emilio Grazioli began establishing in the province of Ljubljana local sections of the Fascist organizations that already existed in Italy, such as the Gioventu Italiana del Littorio and the Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro.

Emilio Grazioli's goal was to integrate the new province, which would still retain considerable autonomy, within the Kingdom of Italy, without alienating the sympathies of large anti-Communist sections of the population who saw in Italy a protection from the nascent Titoist movement and from harsher German occupation.

Emilio Grazioli, who tried in vain to stem the military escalation, considered such military actions a mistakes, likening them to those carried out by the Germans in northern Slovenia, which had pushed many Slovenians to side with the partisans.

Emilio Grazioli protested, especially with regards to the police headquarters in Ljubljana, but in the end he had to give in.

Emilio Grazioli responded harshly to the killing of the latter, by shooting 32 political prisoners taken from prisons.

On 15 June 1943 Emilio Grazioli was replaced by Giuseppe Lombrassa as High Commissioner for the Province of Ljubljana, and was appointed prefect of Catania.

Emilio Grazioli had barely settled there when he was forced to flee by the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Emilio Grazioli was initially sentenced to a twelve-year prison term, but this was then reduced to just four months, and he was released in 1946.

Emilio Grazioli then retired to private life, being unsuccessfully requested for extradition by the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.