Panozzo Family Papers

This fund contains 52 letters penned by Marco Panozzo, from Barmera internment camp, to his wife and daughters. Marco Panozzo (1899-1942) migrated from a village in the province of Vicenza to Australia in 1922. He worked in the coal mines at Corrimal, N.S.W and for the Italian wine and spirits distributor Cinzano in Sydney until 1936. He then was a journalist for the Sydney newspaper Italo-Australian and an officer of the local Italian Chamber of Commerce until the outbreak of World War II. He was subsequently interned as an enemy alien in camps at Hay, N.S.W. and Barmera, South Australia, where he died of a heart failure on 1 January 1942. Panozzo’s first arrival at the Barmera camp and death for aneurism are reported in Federico Bonisoli’s diaries. A 65-page governmental file (3498449, at the NAA, Sydney) contains security documents regarding Panozzo’s suspected support to fascism, fingerprints and the ambiguous classification of Panozzo as alien, interned and naturalised.