Giuseppe Levakovich was born on 2 March 1902 in Carsete di Buje, Istria, when this region was still part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His family came from the county of Primorje-Gorski Kotar in Croatia. He lived with his family in the Croatian village of Crni Lug until the end of World War I. He was orphaned at the age of 15.
Family and Career
In 1919, Guiseppe Levakovich travelled for the first time to Fiume [Croatian: Rijeka], where he came into contact with Italian irredentist circles. This movement sought to annex the parts of the country that had belonged to the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to Italy. Giuseppe Levakovich then moved to Buje, where a large community of Istrian Roma lived, and worked as a horse breeder. A few years later, he married Amalia Levakovich (1910–1970), with whom he had three children.
In 1937, he went to Ethiopia, which had recently been occupied by Italy, to work for the government. While he was there, in 1938, his family was sent into police banishment (confino) in southern Italy, as were many other Istrian Roma.
Return to Italy
Giuseppe Levakovich returned to Italy in 1939 and separated from his first wife. In 1940 he married Emma ‘Wilma’ Braidich (1921/22–unknown), whose family lived in Postumia [Slovenian: Postojna], at that time part of the Province of Trieste. When he learnt that Roma had been killed in the Independent State of Croatia, he decided to leave Istria and set off with his family for central Italy.
After learning that Slovenian Roma had been interned in Tossicia in Abruzzo, he travelled there. He managed to make contact with them, and so was later able to testify to the harsh living conditions faced by the internees.
He then returned to the province of Udine and continued to travel with a caravan, trying to avoid the German troops that were increasing in number in northern Italy after the announcement of the armistice (8 September 1943).
Arrest of Emma Braidich
After one of Levakovich’s horses was confiscated by the Germans, his wife Emma went to the German military command in Talmasson in the province of Udine to claim it, but she was arrested there together with another Romni. Archive documents confirm Giuseppe Levakovich’s report: Emma Braidich and Maria Levakovich (1903–unknown) were arrested by the Security Police in Talmasson, in the province of Udine, on 27 December 1944 and sent to prison on the 30th of the same month.1Arolsen Archives, Überstellungs- und Zugangslisten (KL Ravensbrück – Frauen), 16.01.1945, 1.1.35.1/3768066/ITS Digital Archive.
On 11 January 1945, a transport left Trieste for Ravensbrück concentration camp, picking up further deportees in Udine; these included Emma Braidich, Maria Levakovich and a third person, Maria Braidich (1903/04–unknown). Between February and March 1945, all three were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where they were liberated on 15 April.2Arolsen Archives, Tracing and documentation case no. 1.838.237 for Levakovic, Maria, 6.3.3.2/ITS Digital Archive; Tracing and documentation case no. 1.119.626 for Braidich, Maria, 6.3.3.2/ITS Digital Archive; Tracing and documentation case no. 1.054.796 for Braidich, Emma, 6.3.3.2/ITS Digital Archive. Mantelli’s and Tranfaglia’s book does not mention the internment of the three women in Bergen-Belsen (Il libro dei deportati, vol. 1, 382).
In the Resistenza
After his wife was deported to Germany, Giuseppe Levakovich decided to join the Resistenza [resistance]. He joined the Osoppo Brigade and was deployed as a partisan in the province of Udine.
From January 1944 until the liberation (25 April 1945), he belonged to a unit which was responsible for procuring rations for the entire brigade by breaking into the wealthy people’s houses at night.
Liberation and Testimony
After the end of the war, Levakovich lived with his wife again, but he did not return to Istria, which was now part of the Socialist Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia. In the 1960s, he lived in a caravan in a suburb of Milan and later moved onto the first pitch set up by the Milan city council, officially designated as an ‘equipped rest area for Nomads’, commonly known as a ‘Nomad camp’. Giuseppe Levakovich emphasised the contradictory nature of this type of facility.
Most of the information in this article is taken from the autobiography that Giuseppe Levakovich published in 1975. The book can be regarded as the first account written by a Romani person of the life of the Slovenian-Croatian Roma and the persecution they suffered. Giuseppe Levakovich died in Milan in 1988; the day and month of his death are not known.
