Joseph Nissim died at one hundred years. Of which two have been fighting Italy and seventy to contribute first to the economic boom and, then, to the financial stability of many thousands of families in the Bel Paese and to the consumption of millions of Italians and others.
Yes, because this man, born in Thessaloniki to an Jewish family and escaped just in time to avoid being exterminated together with 98% of the inhabitants of what was the largest Jewish community in Europe, enlisted as a volunteer in the Royal Air Force, participated as a paratrooper at the great battle of El Alamein and ended the war with a medal for military valor. Then, he decided to settle in Italy, more precisely in Milan, where he set up a thriving import-export business: after an initial collaboration with the American Procter & Gamble, he realized he didn't want to work under a "boss" and set up on his own with his Bolton. The recipe was simple but brilliant, like many other initiatives that contributed to the success of Italy after the war, before we began to self-castrate: focus on products in tune with mass tastes, supported by direct slogans, "understandable by Turin in Catania ”, as he repeated. After starting to get serious with Rio Mare tuna, Nissim acquired decotte companies and did not make stews, but relaunched them. These are the cases of Fornet and Collistar, Vetril and Merito, Neutro Roberts and Somatoline, Omino Bianco and Bostik. Raise your hand if you haven't been a customer!
He died yesterday, at the beautiful age of 100, mourned by 5 employees, mostly Italians. While making almost half of its revenues in Italy, international giants such as Procter & Gamble and Unilever have always viewed it as a competitor at their level. And to think that former giants such as the former FIAT group have been teaching us for decades that the Italian market does not count ...
Of the military, Nissim has always kept the privacy and dignity of private life, meticulousness and punctuality in the execution and delivery of the products. It is no coincidence that he made a fortune putting on the shelves of the supermarkets, like the Esselunga of the other great old man, Bernardo Caprotti, who also disappeared from a few years to over ninety years, "parachuting" to all of us.
Photo: Milan Jewish community
