One of the grand old men of the Italian left, Vittorio Foa, died on Monday aged 98.
The leader of Italy's main centre-left party, Walter Veltroni of the Democratic Party (PD), paid tribute to Foa as ''one of Italy's best sons''.
''Vittorio Foa personified for me the model of a militant for democracy...a man with a contagious optimism and extremely high personal disinterest''.
Born in Turin in September 1910, Foa graduated in law from Turin University in 1931 before becoming an anti-Fascist activist in the Justice and Liberty Movement.
He was fingered by an informant for Mussolini's OVRA secret police in 1935 and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment the following year.
After serving with the Resistance, Foa was a representative of Italy's short-lived liberal-Socialist Action Party at the postwar Constituent Assembly.
He later joined the leftwing trade union CGIL, becoming one of its leading members, before a parliamentary career first as a Socialist MP and then as as a Senator for the PD.
