The Jew who used to live in Monti Giosue is to be found in hiding at Dr Gentile's house, Via Doria No 9, the one who has a wholesale hosiery business in Milan.
The contents of the above anonymous letter, posted in Milan in December 1944, prompted the arrest of two Jewish women, Giulia Leoni and her daughter Augusta. Subsequently interned in a concentration camp in Bolzano, both women died two months later, having been beaten to death by prison guards.
A photocopy of the original of the treacherous letter (see picture above right), in all its grim, untidy and semi-literate detail, is just one of many valuable documents contained in Mimmo Franzinelli's book, Delatori (Informers).
This remarkable and unprecedented study paints a disturbing picture of the extent to which not only professional spies but also self-seeking citizen informers proved themselves an invaluable weapon in the armoury of the Fascist regime of Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.
Il Duce had been head of government for only three months when, on January 23rd 1923, he sent a brief note to Deputy Aldo Finzi, junior home office minister: "Dear Finzi, I hearby order that transcripts of all telephone taps from now on be sent to me and to me alone. Have just one copy made, one copy which will be passed on from you to me."
Mussolini, like other dictators before and after him, was all too aware of the importance of an extensive intelligence system. Yet even he can hardly have anticipated the extent to which that intelligence gathering was to be helped by the enthusiastic contributions of worthy Fascist citizens, all too ready to "shop" a neighbour, a rival or an enemy - for reasons that usually had more to do with envy and greed than ideology.
In its wealth of detailed research, Delatori provides an insight into the extent to which "informing", "spying" or "grassing" wove themselves into the fabric of daily life in Fascist Italy. At the cinema, the restaurant, the bar, the workplace, the newspaper kiosk or even at home, there was always the chance that somebody was listening. The phenomenon was illustrated by a popular catchphrase of the Fascist era, "Taci, Mussolini t'ascolta" ('Shut up, Mussolini is listening to you").
An anonymous letter could prove literally fatal for the person or persons against whom it was directed. While it was true that thousands of tip-offs about anti-Fascist behaviour led to internment, it was equally true that information about the whereabouts of Jews, especially during the 1943-1945 period of the Socialist (Puppet) Republic of Salo, often sent Jews to death in Nazi concentration camps.
For example, on May 7th, 1936, Luciano Livi, a carpenter on his way to Rome by train, made the mistake of complaining to his travelling companions both about his poor pay and the widespread "hunger and unemployment" in Italy. Unfortunately for Livi, the man seated next to him was a Fascist official, who arrested him.
When the train pulled into Rome, not only the Fascist official but the three other passengers in the compartment went along to the nearest police station to file a denunzia (complaint) against Livi, who was subsequently interned in Castelli di Teramo on the orders of Mussolini himself.
Even a school essay could prove dangerously politically incorrect. Asked to write an essay, "Il Duce, the Modern Prince" (in a reference to Machiavelli's celebrated 16th-century treatise), 18-year-old Milanese schoolgirl Maria Luisa Tulli in March 1942 found herself denounced by her teacher for having the temerity to suggest that no affinity between Mussolini and the Prince existed. She was subsequently arrested and sentenced to five years' internment.
Harsh as the thousands of similar sentences (many of them documented in Delatori) undoubtedly were, they were as nothing compared to the treatment of Jews. Between 1943 and 1945, more than 8,000 of 43,000 registered Jews in northern and central Italy were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where 5,896 of them died.
Franzinelli argues convincingly that such a round-up, carried out by the occupying Nazi German forces in tandem with Italian Fascist police, had to rely heavily on informers and tip-offs.
Following the introduction of the 1938 Race Laws, Jews were de facto a second-class race, deprived of basic civil rights.
By January 1944, Mussolini had declared Jews enemies of the state and confiscated all their goods. In effect, by late 1943, Jews had a price-tag of 5,000 lire (£2 today) on their heads, often paid by Nazis to their Italian Fascist brethren.
Consequently, by 1944 thousands of Italian Jews were either in hiding or trying to escape from Italy. In such a context, argues Franzinelli, Jews could be "flushed out" only with the help of spontaneous grassroots informers.
In particular, Franzinelli points to the evidence of Gestapo commandant Theodor Saewecke during his post-war trial for his role in the September 1943 massacre of 56 Jews at Meina, Lago Maggiore, the first such "racial cleansing" on Italian soil. Commandant Saewecke pointed out that several of the Nazi soldiers who killed the 56 Jews had just come back from the Russian front and would have been "unable to distinguish a Jew from an Italian", adding that "therefore somebody had helped them".
Jealously, resentment and a desire to appropriate their property were among the motives spurring on informers against the Jews. For example, Giorgio and Arturo Montecorboli, who had fled their native Ancona to hide in Florence, were "sold" to the Nazis by their maid. Arrested in February 1944, they were deported to their deaths in Auschwitz two months later.
Some of the most heart-rending tales told by Franzinelli concern those Jews who tried to escape to the relative safety of neutral Switzerland. In the network of escape lines, set up by partisans, Jews, anti-Fascists and others, to guide Jews across the border, were several false "guides" who often betrayed the Jews, handing them over to the Nazis for money, sometimes even when they had already been paid by their "clients".
"At a certain point, just before we reached the border, our guides stopped and said to us: 'Look there, all you have to do is lift up the bottom of that wire fence and you're there. We cannot go any further with you.' With that, they turned around and then let out a shrill whistle. At that, a light came on . . . and out came soldiers shouting: 'Stop, you're under arrest.' We were stunned; we couldn't believe it."
This testimony comes from Agata Herskovits who, along with her father Luigi, mother Rebecca and brother Tiberio, tried to escape to Switzerland. The family, of Czech origin but coming from nearby Varese, were subsequently deported to Auschwitz, where only Agata survived to tell her grisly tale.
The Herskovits family had fallen victim to an especially treacherous Varese-based band, which led hundreds of unsuspecting Jews to their deaths. In 1947, 11 members of the band were brought to trial, six of them receiving heavy prison sentences. Thanks to amnesties and pardons, however, all six were free men by 1952.
It was difficult to bring informers to trial in post-war Italy because many elements in the Fascist infrastructure (magistrates and judges, for example) had simply transferred themselves to the anti-fascist, post-1945 reality.
Bringing them to justice was also made more difficult by the desire of the victorious Allies to help Italy, a state with a border close to the Iron Curtain, get back on its feet as quickly as possible.
All of which meant that many painful and shameful incidents were simply buried rather than being faced. Delatori is a useful work in that it confronts us once again with precisely that uncomfortable, recent Italian past. Delatori by Mimmo Franzinelli is published by Mondadori (www.mondadori.com/libri)