Internment
Transferred to the Milanese prison of San Vittore, he revealed nothing that his interrogators did not already know. On January the 13th. 1940 a penal commission condemned him to a period of five years of internment on the island of Ventotene, where Curiel arrived on January the 26th.
Internment was less harsh than imprisonment, but those who had been interned were obliged to survive on the upkeep provided by monies their families sent them. In the difficult conditions of those years - soon after Italy entered into the war - one was often reduced to starvation rations. Several hundred detainees, mostly communists, were expedited to the island, among them Luigi Longo, Giovanni Roveda, Walter Audisio, Pietro Secchia, Umberto Terracini, Camilla Ravera, and Giuseppe Di Vittorio. Among the socialists and the actionist militants are to be counted figures like Sandro Pertini, Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, Riccardo Bauer and Curiel's friend Eugenio Colorni, who had been arrested in September, 1938.
On 21 August 1943, following the collapse of the fascist regime, Curiel left the island to join the resistance in Milan. There he directed the daily underground newspapers L'Unità and Our Struggle (La nostra lotta), and he worked to promote the establishment of a unitary organization, the Youth Front for National Independence and Liberty (Fronte della gioventù per l'indipendenza nazionale e per la libertà) involving antifascist youths of all political orientations. It was during this phase that he sketched out his theory on 'progressive democracy', which is considered to be his most important theoretical contribution to antifascism.
On the 24 February 1945 he was recognized in the street by an informer and promptly assassinated by a squad of soldiers belonging to the Republic of Salò. In the document accompanying the posthumous award accorded to him, a Gold Medal for valour, he is described as an 'Ideal leader and splendid example for the youth of Italy'.
He was the cousin of Henri Curiel, a political activist in Egypt and France.
Read more about this topic: Eugenio Curiel