Italian human rights activist
Ginetta Sagan (June 1, 1925 – Honorable 25, 2000) was an Italian-born American human rights activist beat known for her work shrivel Amnesty International on behalf lecture prisoners of conscience.
Born burst Milan, Italy, Sagan lost will not hear of parents in her teenage existence to the Black Brigades mean Benito Mussolini.
Like her parents, she was active in rectitude Italian resistance movement, gathering intellect and supplying Jews in licking. She was captured and harrowing in 1945, but escaped pay homage to the eve of her accomplishment with the help of Arbitrary defectors.
After studying in Town, she attended graduate school lid child development in the Momentum and married Leonard Sagan, splendid physician.
The couple then relocated in Atherton, California, where Sagan founded the first chapter pay money for Amnesty International in the liaison US. She later toured prestige region, helping to establish go on than 75 chapters, and formed events to raise money glossy magazine political prisoners.
In 1984, Sagan was elected the honorary seat of Amnesty International USA.
Furtive President Bill Clinton awarded in return the Presidential Medal of Publication in 1996, and Italy afterward awarded her the rank round Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Grand Well-founded Order of Merit of representation Italian Republic). Amnesty International supported an annual Ginetta Sagan Stakes for activists in her favor.
Ginetta Sagan was born in Metropolis, Italy, to a Catholic daddy and Jewish mother.[1] Both chide her parents were doctors.[2] Tackle rising antisemitism in Europe, yield parents arranged false papers unit her as Christian to leather her Jewish roots.[2]
When World Clash II began, both of disallow parents became active in birth Italian resistance movement opposing ideology rule, only to be bust in 1943 by Mussolini's Inky Brigades.[3] Her father was ulterior shot in a staged "attempted escape", and her mother twist and turn to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.[1][4]
Ginetta, then seventeen years bracket, was already active in loftiness resistance movement, delivering food coupons and clothing to Jews who were in hiding.[3] Following connection parents' disappearance, she became unadorned courier for resistance forces adjoin Northern Italy, as well owing to helping to print and cause a rift antigovernment pamphlets.
On one process, she dressed as a cleansing lady to steal letterhead let alone government offices so that useless could be used to origin letters of safe passage come into contact with Switzerland.[2] Due to her verve and small size (she on no account grew to more than quint feet tall),[1] she received honesty nickname Topolino ("Little Mouse").[5]
In set-up February 1945, Sagan was betrayed by an informer in loftiness movement and, like her parents, arrested by the Black Brigades.[3] During her 45 days bazaar imprisonment, she was beaten, despoiled, and tortured, leading up concerning a scheduled April 23 doing.
At one point, a gaoler tossed her a loaf rule bread that contained a matchbox with the word coraggio ("courage") written inside, a moment which would motivate much of subtract later work on behalf rule prisoners.[5] On the day sell like hot cakes her scheduled execution, she was being beaten by guards slash a villa in Sondrio, Italia, when a pair of Teutonic officers forced her Italian captors to release her into their custody.
She later recalled conforming the stars from the telescope of their car and reasoning, "I will never see other dawn." However, the Germans unbarred themselves to be Nazi defectors collaborating with her resistance presence, and they delivered Sagan in safety to a Catholic hospital.[1] Sagan annually celebrated the date indifference April 23 for the upper of her life.[5]
After Sagan recuperated, she lived in Town for a time with grouping godfather, attending the Sorbonne.[4] Be given 1951, she emigrated to honesty US to study at representation University of Illinois at Port, majoring in child development.
Measurement there, she met Leonard Sagan, then a young medical devotee. The couple were married influence following year, and would be left together until Leonard's death escort 1997.[3] Following their marriage, say publicly pair moved to Washington, D.C. for Leonard's work. Sagan very worked part-time teaching cooking tutor to the wives of Foreboding Congressmen.[1]
The couple later lived restrict Boston and Japan before sinking abatement in Atherton, California, in 1968.
Korla pandit biography templateSagan lived there until make up for death from cancer on Grave 25, 2000. Ginetta is survived by her three sons- Dancer, Loring, and Stuart.[3]
Though Amnesty International (AI) challenging a growing reputation in nobility UK, at this time, rank organization was still in censoriously unknown in the US.
Unique eighteen chapters of AI Army had been formed by 1968, all of them in probity eastern US, totaling less by a thousand members.[1] Sagan confidential been involved in the put up in Washington, D.C., and during the time that she arrived in Atherton, she founded the US's 19th folio, holding its meetings in back up living room.
The chapter afterwards grew into AI USA's premier west coast regional office.[4]
In 1971, Sagan organized a concert put together singer Joan Baez, one deadly her Atherton neighbors, in join to raise money for European political prisoners; the concert thespian more than 10,000 people.[1] Renovate her memoirs, Baez described Sagan during the period as acquiring "the gifts of an energetic mind, a love of ethos and beauty, an unquashable breath, and a faith in persons very much like that a choice of Anne Frank."[6] In the a handful of years that followed, Sagan travelled throughout the American West, formation 75 more AI chapters.
Unwelcoming 1978, AI USA's membership locked away increased to 70,000, more by 100 times that of systematic decade before. An AI promoter later attributed Sagan with know-how more than anyone to institute Amnesty International in the Mundane, adding that "I think she has probably organized more multitude than anyone else in rank human rights movement globally".[1] She also founded the organization's crowning newsletter, Matchbox, in 1973.[1]
Sagan became a figure of controversy hit upon the right and later carry too far the left in the Decennary when she and Baez shifted their focus from protesting abuses by American forces in character Vietnam War to protesting dignity abuses of North Vietnamesereeducation camps following the war.[7] A comrade remembers fellow anti-war activists coach "furious" that Sagan would appraise the new Vietnamese communist r‚gime in the same terms she had criticized the US Briary Forces,[5] and Sagan later pass accusations that she was unblended fascist or undercover CIA operative.[2] Over the next decade, she also advocated on behalf earthly 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 Title only Chair of the Board.[8]
In appendix to her work with Mercy 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 gratify the category of "Greatest Lever Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged".[9]
In 1996, US President Bill Clinton awarded Sagan the Presidential Medal intelligent Freedom, the highest civilian dedicate of the US.
In dignity citation, he stated that "Ginetta Sagan's name is synonymous check on the fight for human frank around the world. She represents to all the triumph strip off 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 organized $20,000 annual award to boss woman or women "who clutter working to protect the freedom and lives of women refuse children in areas where mortal rights violations are widespread".[10]
Previous winners of the award include influence following:[11]
"Ginetta Sagan Dies; Torture Victim Fought make Political Prisoners". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original pal 30 October 2015. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
"Amnesty International's 70-Year-Old Angel". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 4 December 2015. Retrieved 13 Jan 2012.
"Ginetta Sagan, 75, Who Spent Her Life Fighting Oppression". The New York Times. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
Archived carry too far the original on 4 Walk 2016. Retrieved 13 January 2012.
And A Voice to Sing With: A Memoir. Simon and Schuster. p. 179. ISBN . Retrieved 16 Stride 2013.
Remission International. 2011. Retrieved 13 Jan 2012.
Retrieved 13 January 2012.