Between tangled up regulations and mass registrations: the defascistisation process of secondary school teachers

Abstract

The present paper wants to study a theme not explored by historians so far: the defascistisation of school teacher, choosing the city of Padua as a study case. It is an excellent observatory because in Padua was located the headquarter of the Ministry of National Education and because it was a town very aligned with fascist guidelines.
The State Archive of Padua preserves the dossier of all the people (teachers, headmasters, school inspectors, etc.) referred by the provincial commission for the defascistisation during the years 1945-46: a valuable and unpublished documentation that allows to reconstruct the procedural events of those teachers accused of having played an active role during fascism. The Casrec Archive (Centro di Ateneo per la storia della Resistenza e dell’età contemporanea) of Padua University preserves the documents of the Provveditorato agli studi (board education), an office informed about the activity of the commission and an active subject in the defascistisation process.
The aim of the essay is therefore to reconstruct the context within which the provincial purification commission and the ministerial subcommission that followed in 1946 operated, trying to shed some light on the very complicated regulations, and to present the main actors involved in the defascistisation process.