Loveday – Part 1:
The Murder of Francesco Fantin
In December 1942, The Sydney Tribune ran the headline
‘ANTI-FACIST MURDERED: Political Terrorism in S.A.’ World War II was raging, and in Australia,
Japanese, Germans and Italian people had been segregated into internment camps
with many arriving in the South Australian outback camp, Loveday, the largest
camp of its kind in Australia.
Loveday was established in 1941, near Bamera, holding over
5000 internees, and 1500 staff comprised from the Australian Military Forces.
It also held, at times, Prisoners of War. The camp was established by the
Australian government to hold people it labelled ‘enemy aliens,’ typically,
these were people from countries that Australia and its allies had declared war
against.
According to the Loveday Lives website,
of 15000 internees across the group of camps during its usages, 7000 were in
Australia at the outbreak of the war, and 8000 were transported from the United
Kingdom and Dutch East Indies through arrangements by their government.[1]
In June 1941 the 4th
Garrison Battalion arrived at Loveday to begin Guard duty. Later that month the
first internees, a group of 458 Italians arrived at the camp from Hay in New
South Wales. In August 1941, the first
international internees arrived, sent from Britain after the fall of France.
The first Japanese internees arrived from the Northern Territory in January
1942, with Germans and more Italians arriving the same month.
In 1943, the camp reached 5382 internees. The camp closed in 1946 – for more
information about the history of the camp and a timeline of significant events
please visit: https://lovedaylives.com/
One internee at Loveday was Italian, Francesco Fantin. Fantin
was born in San Vito di Leguzzano in North Italy in 1901. Fantin was a textile
worker in Italy. The rise of Fascism in Italy saw Fantin become an anarchist
and political militant. Fantin left Italy in 1927, arriving in Melbourne,
before moving to Queensland where his brothers, Luigi and Alfonso had a cane
farm at Sawmill Pocket, Edmonton.
In the 1930s, Fantin moved to Victoria, where he became
active in the Labour and anti-fascist movements. He became a correspondent for
the anti-fascist newspaper La Risoccossa. Fantin was arrested by
Australian authorities in 1940 as a fascist. He appealed the decision but
lost, and was sent to Loveday Internment Camp 14A at Barmera. Unlike other
internment camps, Loveday separated internees by nationality, not political
affiliation, which led to a political divide between those detained. Fantin
stood with the anti-fascists and became a political leader, which led to
constant harassment, abuse, and assault from fascist detainees.[2] Another
detainee entered Fantin's tent and beat him senseless. Fantin reported the
assault, but the authorities would not get involved.
In 1942, near sunset,
on November 16, Fantin was drinking from a water tap. He was alone when fascist
supporter, Giovanni Bruno Casotti, a detainee who had arrived only two weeks
prior from Western Australia, assaulted him. There are two versions of events,
which I will discuss in part two.
Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2024
[1]
‘History’, Loveday Lives, (2023),
https://lovedaylives.com/history/.
[2] Paul
Nursey-Bray, 'Fantin, Francesco Giovanni (Frank) (1901–1942)', Australian
Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National
University,
https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/fantin-francesco-giovanni-frank-12912/text23327.
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