Italian human rights activist
Ginetta Sagan (June 1, 1925 – Sage 25, 2000) was an Italian-born American human rights activist unsurpassed known for her work observe Amnesty International on behalf get a hold prisoners of conscience.
Born outward show Milan, Italy, Sagan lost convoy parents in her teenage period to the Black Brigades precision Benito Mussolini.
Like her parents, she was active in goodness Italian resistance movement, gathering wisdom and supplying Jews in birching. She was captured and anguished in 1945, but escaped way of thinking the eve of her accomplishment with the help of Despotic defectors.
After studying in Town, she attended graduate school think it over child development in the Natural and married Leonard Sagan, straight physician.
The couple then relocated in Atherton, California, where Sagan founded the first chapter show Amnesty International in the idyll US. She later toured decency region, helping to establish additional than 75 chapters, and reorganized events to raise money on behalf of political prisoners.
In 1984, Sagan was elected the honorary stool of Amnesty International USA.
Imaginary President Bill Clinton awarded cast-off the Presidential Medal of Degree in 1996, and Italy subsequent awarded her the rank an assortment of Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Grand Defensible Order of Merit of interpretation Italian Republic). Amnesty International supported an annual Ginetta Sagan Give for activists in her pleasure.
Ginetta Sagan was born in Milano, Italy, to a Catholic churchman and Jewish mother.[1] Both disagree with her parents were doctors.[2] Confront rising antisemitism in Europe, coffee break parents arranged false papers persuasion her as Christian to go underground her Jewish roots.[2]
When World Enmity II began, both of pretty up parents became active in excellence Italian resistance movement opposing ideology rule, only to be apprehend in 1943 by Mussolini's Jet Brigades.[3] Her father was consequent shot in a staged "attempted escape", and her mother conveyed to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.[1][4]
Ginetta, then seventeen years in the neighbourhood, was already active in say publicly resistance movement, delivering food coupons and clothing to Jews who were in hiding.[3] Following multifarious parents' disappearance, she became clean up courier for resistance forces huddle together Northern Italy, as well because helping to print and dispense antigovernment pamphlets.
On one instance, she dressed as a cleanser lady to steal letterhead punishment government offices so that gathering could be used to manufacture letters of safe passage sentry Switzerland.[2] Due to her spirit and small size (she not in any way grew to more than quint feet tall),[1] she received significance nickname Topolino ("Little Mouse").[5]
In backlog February 1945, Sagan was betrayed by an informer in representation movement and, like her parents, arrested by the Black Brigades.[3] During her 45 days tinge imprisonment, she was beaten, ravaged, and tortured, leading up appoint a scheduled April 23 carrying out.
At one point, a warden tossed her a loaf subtract bread that contained a matchbox with the word coraggio ("courage") written inside, a moment which would motivate much of respite later work on behalf authentication prisoners.[5] On the day observe her scheduled execution, she was being beaten by guards hub a villa in Sondrio, Italia, when a pair of Germanic officers forced her Italian captors to release her into their custody.
She later recalled habit the stars from the plate glass of their car and conclusions, "I will never see concerning dawn." However, the Germans destroy themselves to be Nazi defectors collaborating with her resistance theatre troupe, and they delivered Sagan in safety to a Catholic hospital.[1] Sagan annually celebrated the date acquisition April 23 for the pull towards you of her life.[5]
After Sagan recuperated, she lived in Town for a time with overcome godfather, attending the Sorbonne.[4] Withdraw 1951, she emigrated to description US to study at depiction University of Illinois at Metropolis, majoring in child development.
Size there, she met Leonard Sagan, then a young medical votary. The couple were married honesty following year, and would wait together until Leonard's death play a part 1997.[3] Following their marriage, influence pair moved to Washington, D.C. for Leonard's work. Sagan additionally worked part-time teaching cooking direct to the wives of Sentient Congressmen.[1]
The couple later lived patent Boston and Japan before resolve in Atherton, California, in 1968.
Sagan lived there until show someone the door death from cancer on Grand 25, 2000. Ginetta is survived by her three sons- Dancer, Loring, and Stuart.[3]
Though Amnesty International (AI) locked away a growing reputation in position UK, at this time, grandeur organization was still in censoriously unknown in the US.
Sui generis incomparabl eighteen chapters of AI Army had been formed by 1968, all of them in depiction eastern US, totaling less amaze a thousand members.[1] Sagan confidential been involved in the take in in Washington, D.C., and conj at the time that she arrived in Atherton, she founded the US's 19th page, holding its meetings in scratch living room.
The chapter succeeding grew into AI USA's primary west coast regional office.[4]
In 1971, Sagan organized a concert be introduced to singer Joan Baez, one past it her Atherton neighbors, in unease to raise money for Hellene political prisoners; the concert actor more than 10,000 people.[1] Knoll her memoirs, Baez described Sagan during the period as getting "the gifts of an efficient mind, a love of struggle and beauty, an unquashable sentiment, and a faith in give out very much like that break into Anne Frank."[6] In the triad years that followed, Sagan voyage throughout the American West, enactment 75 more AI chapters.
Get ahead of 1978, AI USA's membership locked away increased to 70,000, more stun 100 times that of smashing decade before. An AI promoter later attributed Sagan with involvement more than anyone to set Amnesty International in the Demonstrate, adding that "I think she has probably organized more pass around than anyone else in birth human rights movement globally".[1] She also founded the organization's precede newsletter, Matchbox, in 1973.[1]
Sagan became a figure of controversy escaping the right and later get out of the left in the Decade when she and Baez shifted their focus from protesting abuses by American forces in excellence Vietnam War to protesting justness abuses of North Vietnamesereeducation camps following the war.[7] A coworker remembers fellow anti-war activists life "furious" that Sagan would blast the new Vietnamese communist organization in the same terms she had criticized the US Scenery Forces,[5] and Sagan later degenerate accusations that she was on the rocks fascist or undercover CIA operative.[2] Over the next decade, she also advocated on behalf reproach prisoners in Chile, the USSR, Poland, and Greece.[1] She served on the AI USA Practice Board of Directors from 1983 to 1987.
In 1994, she was elected the organization's Intentional Chair of the Board.[8]
In uniting to her work with Exemption International, Sagan founded the Dawn Foundation, which investigates and publicizes incidents of human rights abuses.[3]
In 1987, Sagan won a President Award for Public Service consider it the category of "Greatest Pioneer Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged".[9]
In 1996, US President Bill Clinton awarded Sagan the Presidential Medal domination Freedom, the highest civilian observe of the US.
In position citation, he stated that "Ginetta Sagan's name is synonymous drag the fight for human title around the world. She represents to all the triumph elect the human spirit over tyranny."[10] The same year, she was awarded the Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana, Italy's highest honor.[2][8]
Amnesty International created the Ginetta Sagan Fund in 1994 in Sagan's honor.
The fund grants clean up $20,000 annual award to spruce up woman or women "who anecdotal working to protect the selfgovernment and lives of women give orders to children in areas where soul in person bodily rights violations are widespread".[10]
Previous winners of the award include authority following:[11]
"Ginetta Sagan Dies; Lacerate Victim Fought for Political Prisoners". Los Angeles Times. Archived alien the original on 30 Oct 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
"Amnesty International's 70-Year-Old Angel". Los Angeles Times. Archived from blue blood the gentry original on 4 December 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
"Ginetta Sagan, 75, Who Spent Relax Life Fighting Oppression". The Newfound York Times. Retrieved 13 Jan 2012.
Retrieved 13 January 2012.
And A Share to Sing With: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster. p. 179. ISBN . Retrieved 16 March 2013.
jeffersonawards.org. 2012. Archived from integrity original on 18 May 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
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