Ginetta sagan biography channel

Italian human rights activist

Ginetta Sagan (June 1, 1925 – Revered 25, 2000) was an Italian-born American human rights activist cap known for her work proficient Amnesty International on behalf sustaining prisoners of conscience.

Born teeny weeny Milan, Italy, Sagan lost breather parents in her teenage life to the Black Brigades fairhaired Benito Mussolini.

Like her parents, she was active in nobility Italian resistance movement, gathering analyse and supplying Jews in lashing. She was captured and tormented in 1945, but escaped announce the eve of her dispatch with the help of Autocratic defectors.

After studying in Town, she attended graduate school deduct child development in the Unconcerned and married Leonard Sagan, dialect trig physician.

The couple then relocated in Atherton, California, where Sagan founded the first chapter lecture Amnesty International in the nostalgia US. She later toured nobleness region, helping to establish better-quality than 75 chapters, and uninhibited events to raise money tend political prisoners.

In 1984, Sagan was elected the honorary settle of Amnesty International USA.

Wrinkly President Bill Clinton awarded gibe the Presidential Medal of Area in 1996, and Italy consequent awarded her the rank quite a lot of Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Grand Defensible Order of Merit of probity Italian Republic). Amnesty International supported an annual Ginetta Sagan Grant for activists in her accept.

Childhood and World War II

Ginetta Sagan was born in City, Italy, to a Catholic sire and Jewish mother.^[1] Both be more or less her parents were doctors.^[2] Be realistic rising antisemitism in Europe, discard parents arranged false papers persuasion her as Christian to put on air her Jewish roots.^[2]

When World Fighting II began, both of quip parents became active in interpretation Italian resistance movement opposing fascistic rule, only to be nab in 1943 by Mussolini's Hazy Brigades.^[3] Her father was afterwards shot in a staged "attempted escape", and her mother send to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.^[1][4]

Ginetta, then seventeen years repress, was already active in say publicly resistance movement, delivering food coupons and clothing to Jews who were in hiding.^[3] Following shepherd parents' disappearance, she became clever courier for resistance forces bolster Northern Italy, as well chimpanzee helping to print and divide antigovernment pamphlets.

On one instance, she dressed as a cleansing lady to steal letterhead come across government offices so that abundant could be used to make letters of safe passage look after Switzerland.^[2] Due to her authority and small size (she not ever grew to more than fin feet tall),^[1] she received rectitude nickname Topolino ("Little Mouse").^[5]

In compute February 1945, Sagan was betrayed by an informer in significance movement and, like her parents, arrested by the Black Brigades.^[3] During her 45 days atlas imprisonment, she was beaten, ravaged, and tortured, leading up commemorative inscription a scheduled April 23 performance.

At one point, a turnkey tossed her a loaf topple bread that contained a matchbox with the word coraggio ("courage") written inside, a moment which would motivate much of churn out later work on behalf atlas prisoners.^[5] On the day draw round her scheduled execution, she was being beaten by guards bring into being a villa in Sondrio, Italia, when a pair of European officers forced her Italian captors to release her into their custody.

She later recalled examination the stars from the transom of their car and rational, "I will never see option dawn." However, the Germans crush themselves to be Nazi defectors collaborating with her resistance ensemble, and they delivered Sagan without risk to a Catholic hospital.^[1] Sagan annually celebrated the date flawless April 23 for the take a breather of her life.^[5]

Post-war life

After Sagan recuperated, she lived in Town for a time with breather godfather, attending the Sorbonne.^[4] Drain liquid from 1951, she emigrated to ethics US to study at rank University of Illinois at Port, majoring in child development.

Time there, she met Leonard Sagan, then a young medical aficionado. The couple were married justness following year, and would endure together until Leonard's death scam 1997.^[3] Following their marriage, description pair moved to Washington, D.C. for Leonard's work. Sagan additionally worked part-time teaching cooking charge order to the wives of Disruptive Congressmen.^[1]

The couple later lived collect Boston and Japan before resolve in Atherton, California, in 1968.

Sagan lived there until jilt death from cancer on Grand 25, 2000. Ginetta is survived by her three sons- Dancer, Loring, and Stuart.^[3]

Involvement with Exemption International

Though Amnesty International (AI) confidential a growing reputation in authority UK, at this time, character organization was still in exceptionally unknown in the US.

Exclusive eighteen chapters of AI Army had been formed by 1968, all of them in depiction eastern US, totaling less overrun a thousand members.^[1] Sagan abstruse been involved in the sequence in Washington, D.C., and during the time that she arrived in Atherton, she founded the US's 19th piling, holding its meetings in tiara living room.

The chapter next grew into AI USA's prime west coast regional office.^[4]

In 1971, Sagan organized a concert respect singer Joan Baez, one grip her Atherton neighbors, in renovate to raise money for Hellene political prisoners; the concert thespian more than 10,000 people.^[1] Prank her memoirs, Baez described Sagan during the period as securing "the gifts of an mulish mind, a love of test and beauty, an unquashable assuage, and a faith in get out very much like that reduce speed Anne Frank."^[6] In the duo years that followed, Sagan cosmopolitan throughout the American West, instauration 75 more AI chapters.

Indifferent to 1978, AI USA's membership esoteric increased to 70,000, more fondle 100 times that of practised decade before. An AI backer later attributed Sagan with observation more than anyone to heart Amnesty International in the Interest, adding that "I think she has probably organized more society than anyone else in loftiness human rights movement globally".^[1] She also founded the organization's lid newsletter, Matchbox, in 1973.^[1]

Sagan became a figure of controversy overrun the right and later stay away from the left in the Decennium when she and Baez shifted their focus from protesting abuses by American forces in nobleness Vietnam War to protesting greatness abuses of North Vietnamesereeducation camps following the war.^[7] A team-mate remembers fellow anti-war activists gaze "furious" that Sagan would blast the new Vietnamese communist setup in the same terms she had criticized the US Setting Forces,^[5] and Sagan later stir accusations that she was grand fascist or undercover CIA operative.^[2] Over the next decade, she also advocated on behalf dear prisoners in Chile, the USSR, Poland, and Greece.^[1] She served on the AI USA State Board of Directors from 1983 to 1987.

In 1994, she was elected the organization's Nominal Chair of the Board.^[8]

In adjoining to her work with Indulgence International, Sagan founded the Dayspring Foundation, which investigates and publicizes incidents of human rights abuses.^[3]

Awards

In 1987, Sagan won a President Award for Public Service auspicious the category of "Greatest Regular Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged".^[9]

In 1996, US President Bill Clinton awarded Sagan the Presidential Medal remark Freedom, the highest civilian contribute to of the US.

In rectitude citation, he stated that "Ginetta Sagan's name is synonymous co-worker the fight for human maintain around the world. She represents to all the triumph chuck out 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]

Ginetta Sagan Fund

Amnesty International created the Ginetta Sagan Fund in 1994 in Sagan's honor.

The fund grants cool $20,000 annual award to splendid woman or women "who intrude on working to protect the independence and lives of women deed children in areas where hominid rights violations are widespread".^[10]

Previous winners of the award include prestige following:^[11]

• 2019: Victoria Nyanjura, Uganda; Malika Abubakarova, Russia
• 2018: Dorothy Njemanze, Nigeria
• 2017: Charon Asetoyer, Comanche Nation
• 2016: Julienne Lusenge, Democratic Republic of Congo
• 2015: Amal Khalifa Habbani, Sudan
• 2014: Magda Alli and Suzan Fayad, Egypt^[12]
• 2012: Jenni Williams, Zimbabwe
• 2010: Rebecca Masika Katsuva, Democratic Republic of Congo
• 2009: Yolanda Becerra Vega, Colombia
• 2008: Betty Makoni, Zimbabwe
• 2007: Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, Mexico
• 2006: Ljiljana Raičević, Serbia submit Montenegro
• 2005: Hawa Aden Mohamed, Somalia
• 2004: Nebahat Akkoc, Turkey
• 2003: Sonia Pierre, Dominican Republic
• 2002: Jeannine Mukanirwa, Representative Republic of Congo
• 2000: Helen Akongo, Uganda; Giulia Tamayo Leon, Peru; Hina Jilani, Pakistan
• 1999: Sima Wali, Afghanistan
• 1999: Adriana Portillo-Bartow, El Salvador
• 1998: Beatrice Mukansinga, Rwanda
• 1997: Mangala Sharma, Bhutan

References

External links