Drafted 8 March 2024, updated 15 July 2025
Above: among the many essays that come out weekly in Italy, many have a Bibliography with very poor sources. Sometimes it is even practically non-existent.
Compiled 24 February, updated 26 March 2024.
MARIO SASSI, Senior Advisor & Blogger (…), LinkedIn 15 February 2024
MS
Reading the two Caprotti brothers’ description of their father, one seems to relive the Indian parable of the blind man who is asked to describe an elephant simply by touching it with one hand. The same elephant is thus presented to the listener in a completely different way. Some describe it as a column by touching its leg, some as a spear by touching its tusks, and some as a whip by touching its tail. A father who with his eldest son behaved more like a farm manager spending part of his time frustrating his initiative in perpetual competition with him while with his daughter he ‘peeled peas’ after shopping at the supermarket. Intolerant and cruel with the former, affectionate and caring with the latter to the point of improvising ‘in the last days of his life, very lucid, practical instructions on everything, starting with his collaborators’, as his daughter Marina tells Corriere in an interview. A vertical fracture that had matured over the years and that was absolutely unreconcilable, involving friendships, managers, and company collaborators at every level. Far from overcome. ‘Sickle and Carello’, except for the ‘letter to Dad’ and the preface by Liliana Segre, remains a dated book. The Italy photographed by Bernardo Caprotti is no more. Esselunga has to deal with discount stores, new competitors and, above all, with itself. Marina Caprotti’s ‘letter to Dad’, which I read carefully, is nonetheless sincere and profound. It expresses the state of mind of a daughter who felt affected in her dearest affections and is committed to telling her father, to whom she was very close. And so I understand the determination to defend his memory. As do Liliana Segre’s memories. True friendships, and Segre’s with Caprotti senior is one, have a value precisely because they reveal themselves when they are decisive. Not formal. And, in this situation, they were. A sincere friendship of long standing, which lasted until the death of the former Esselunga patron. Liliana Segre was one of the very few people invited to his funeral. Caprotti was certainly instrumental in the renovation of the Shoa memorial under Milan’s Central Station. But it would be reductive to limit the relationship between the two to that or other specific initiatives. Liliana Segre speaks of the value of that friendship and Caprotti’s search for ‘elective and non-elective affinities that bound two old gentlemen from another era’.
Bernardo Caprotti, however you think of him, was a unique entrepreneur, important for the growth of the sector and for our country. Capable of rowing against the tide when the context demanded it. The destiny of his family and children has thus been fulfilled. Now it is time to turn the page. (this is an excerpt, if you want to read the full article click below)
[The article continues: Giuseppe Caprotti’s saga between two truths, a father and two brothers] and the author adds : Giuseppe distributed facts and stories of which he was a direct protagonist or as an “informed witness to the facts” to tell “HIS” truth…
Comments, always on LinkedIN
GC: I leave the same comment I wrote on Twitter. Careful not to confuse carrots (!) with apples
@g.caprotti
I have not only been a protagonist and ‘witness to the facts’ of the #esselunga and #Caprotti story. I had access, besides the books of #Rockefeller’s managers, to no less than four archives: Ibec’s, mine, my uncle Claudio Caprotti’s [Caprotti] and my mother’s [Giorgina Venosta].
MS: Giuseppe Maria Giorgio Caprotti I am interested in everything related to your presence as a manager in the company, the reactions, the presence of the two ‘fathers’ and the repercussions on the company and the protagonists today. With all the limitations of an outside observer. The story involves me just the right amount.
GC: MS OK but, even on the company’s affairs, the story relies heavily on the archives
MS: GMGC up to a certain date.
GC: MS always testimonies of former employees and consultants
GC: MS and I will tell you more that they wrote part of it. Feltrinelli and I only corrected it
MS: GC: MS some of them I esteemed. Others much less so
GC: MS but he doesn’t know who they are. I, in the book, talk about 150 but at one point I lost count. And some are not mentioned, they did not want to
MS: GCGC I don’t understand Ping pong. I could name a dozen. If two mentioned in the book are enough, I would say a very good manager taken later on at Rewe as marketing director and a not very esteemed human resources director with whom I shared a CCNL renewal.
GC: MS is not them. Good day
My sources were:
- direct experience – things done or seen being done – and childhood memories
- direct oral testimonies
- writings of former collaborators or consultants
- newspaper articles
- books
- photographic material
- material from the various civil and criminal proceedings
- balance sheets
- archives of myself, Rockefeller and others.
Below: fortunately there are those who have noticed this and write “the difference… is that here are the sources”.
Out of curiosity, I have in the past bought a few books by politicians or ‘big businessmen’ that, when tested upon reading, proved to be devoid of real content. A couple, in which the author made claims without any kind of proof or source, ended up in the trash.
I therefore advise everyone to always look at the Bibliography before buying a book!
As a historian, I ‘went crazy’ for decades to find the name of the spy, mentioned in my book – and who acted from Innsbruck against Italy – whose surname I only had: Clairval.
The French secret service man was called Henry Clairval, page 75, footnote 72.
A journalist would probably have been satisfied with the surname.
A historian would not.
Below: the archival sources of my research on Alto Adige (full title: “Alto Adige o Sud Tirolo?” The South or South Tyrolean question from 1945 to 1948 and its developments: a study of French diplomatic archives.
Franco Angeli, 1988, three editions). P.S.: everything becomes clearer if one reads With Le Ossa dei Caprotti I am back to being a “historian”.
Conclusion:
between what Dr Sassi, whom I respect, says and the historical approach of Le Ossa dei Caprotti there is a fundamental difference: research .
There are, in addition to the years spent in the field doing things, those spent in:
– requests to people, private or public archives,
– reading and evaluating material,
– choices of the same
And then, in the end, no easy drafting.
My book therefore goes far beyond the fact that I was an entrepreneur, manager, administrator or direct witness to the facts.
There is one last thing: the company was not built by ‘one’ (Bernardo) or by a small group (my father, myself and others) but by a multitude of people (‘From I to We’).
But those who did not work there, who did not live it, continue to believe in the myth of the ‘one man in charge’.
Esselunga, on the other hand, was a company, with great participation – including emotional participation – by employees, a company with widespread entrepreneurship: I saw, for example, cashiers demonstrate an unimaginable spirit of belonging.
‘Attached’ to their till or their department in a visceral way. Suffice it to say that the majority of the staff took part in saving the company from unions and continuous strikes in the 1980s.
The spirit of belonging made the difference to other GD companies.
I have simply increased it, giving it an ‘American’ approach (e.g. appraisals for all departments, bonuses, training courses, etc.) and putting‘my heart‘ into it, which explains some of the current displays of esteem and affection.
