The last natural child of Fascist
dictator Benito Mussolini has died aged 99, the Huffington Post
reported Tuesday.
Elena Curti died in her home at Acquapendente near Viterbo. She
would have turned 100 on October 19.
Curti was the daughter of Milanese seamstress Angela Cucciati,
who had an affair with Mussolini in 1921, when he was th
38-year-old editor of the newspaper Il Popolo D'Italia.
The pair met because she went to ask him to get her husband, a
Fascist militant called Bruno Curti, out of prison.
Elena Curti only learned Mussolini was her natural father when
her mother told her when she turned 18.
Mussolini wanted to meet her, and during the 1944-45 puppet
Italian Social Republic of Salò he received her on a daily basis
in the northern city.
Mussolini's longtime mistress Claretta Petacci thought the
blonde girl was another of her lover's many other flings and
vainly asked him to send her away.
On April 27 1945 she was sitting beside her father in the lorry
taking him out of Italy in disguise before he was moved to a
German truck where he was arrested and executed by partisans.
For years she was the only living witness of those dramatic
moments at Dongo.
Petacci, who was also executed and strung up beside Mussolini in
Milan, was in another car with her brother Marcello.
The scene was reconstructed in Pasquale Squitieri's 1984 film
Claretta.
After WWII Curti emigrated to Spain and only came back to Italy
around 20 years ago.
She wrote a book of memoirs entitled The Three-Pointed Nail
(2203).
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