Amvets buy Nutley property

once owned by Benito Mussolini

(Oct. 11, 1956) -- Benito Mussolini, the late and unlamented Italian “bully boy”, once owned a corner lot here in Nutley.

In clearing the title to its land, upon which Nutley Post, Amvets, built its building preparatory to a ceremonial burning of its mortgage on Oct. 23, the veterans group made the discovery.

The abstract recites that the defunct D’Auria Bank and Trust Company, of 139 Seventh Avenue, Newark, had owned the corner lot along with its other land investments. The bank failed and the Federal Deposits Insurance Corporation took over in 1939 to liquidate its assets.

Listed among the creditors of the banking firm were both Mussolini and the Italian Royal Government.

They became involved in the Nutley holding through the liquidation of the parent bank, the Banca Salvatore D’Auria and Figli, a private banking partnership in Naples which also failed on two continents. In that liquidation, according to the abstract, Mussolini named Alfonso Furguide, one of his palace cronies as the Italian Government’s Extraordinary Commissioner in charge of the affairs of the bank.

Mussolini and the Italian Government thereupon “invested” in the Naples bank’s affairs.

In time, the FDIC got around to liquidating the D’Auria branch bank’s assets in this county but the war having begun and Mussolini having declared war on the United States, the abstract records simply under the subheading of “Bank Drafts Outstanding”: “Benito Mussolini is the only creditor who has not yet been paid.”

Source: The Nutley Sun, October 11, 1956

Note: In January 2005/2019, AMVETS Post 30 continues to operate from its building at the corner of Park Avenue and Walnut Street.

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