Lidia Menapace (born Brisca, 3 April 1924 – 7 December 2020) was an Italian

resistance fighter A resistance movement is an organized effort by some portion of the civil population of a country to withstand the legally established government or an occupying power and to disrupt civil order and stability. It may seek to achieve its objectives ...

and politician who served in the

Senate A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

from 2006 to 2008, representing the

Communist Refoundation Party The Communist Refoundation Party ( it, Partito della Rifondazione Comunista, PRC) is a communist political party in Italy that emerged from a split of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1991. The party's secretary is Maurizio Acerbo, who replac ...

Biography

Lidia Menapace née Brisca was born in the northern Italian city of Novara. Her father was a surveyor named Giacomo Brisca and espoused antifascist politics. Her mother was Italia Vercesi, a homemaker whose family tended towards anarchy. While Lidia was in primary school, during the dictatorship of Mussolini, her teachers taught the children to honor and love the regime. But Lidia's mother told her to destroy school reports in which she was classified as belonging to the "Aryan race" because "We are not animals." In 1943 her father was sent to a concentration camp because he would not obey the authority of the Republic of Salò, a recently created Nazi puppet state in northern Italy. Two years later he was freed, and in the meantime his daughter, Lidia, had joined the resistance at age 19. During the time she was a literature student at the Catholic University of Milan, she delivered messages to antifascist soldiers. She also helped Jewish men to escape Italy by bringing them to the Swiss border, and she helped organize escapes from prison. She hid bombs and copies of a Resistance newspaper in the basement of her family's home. She also passed secret messages to political prisoners in jail. After her role in the WWII resistance, during which she rode her bicycle to deliver encoded messages to Italian resistance fighters, Menapace became a pacifism activist and women's rights advocate. She was a member of the collective that founded Il Manifesto, a left-wing newspaper. She was the first woman elected to a legislature position in

Bolzano Bolzano ( or ; german: Bozen, (formerly ); bar, Bozn; lld, Balsan or ) is the capital city of the province of South Tyrol in northern Italy. With a population of 108,245, Bolzano is also by far the largest city in South Tyrol and the third la ...

. Menapace was married to Eugenio Menapace. She died from

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

on 7 December 2020, during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Italy The COVID-19 pandemic in Italy is part of the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was first confirmed to have spread to Italy on 31 January 2020, when t ...

References

External links

* Files about her parliamentary activities (in Italian)
XV
1924 births 2020 deaths Italian partisans People from Novara Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore alumni Communist Refoundation Party politicians Senators of Legislature XV of Italy Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol 20th-century Italian women politicians 21st-century Italian women politicians Italian resistance movement members Women members of the Senate of the Republic (Italy) Female guerrillas Female resistance members of World War II {{Italy-politician-stub