Leone Ginzburg

Leone Ginzburg ( April 4, 1909 in Odessa, † February 5, 1944 in Rome ) was a Ukrainian -born Italian writer, editor and journalist. He is primarily known for his anti -fascist activities and as a hero of the resistance movement.

Ginzburg was with Natalia Ginzburg, born Levi, married and the father of the historian Carlo Ginzburg.

Life

Ginzburg, son of a Jewish- Ukrainian family, already as a child moved to Italy. In Turin, he attended high school and his classmates were among prominent personalities such as Piero Gobetti, Norberto Bobbio and Cesare Pavese. At age 21, he was an Italian citizen. He received a scholarship to Paris, where he began associating with the leading minds of the group Giustizia e Libertà ( " justice and freedom ").

From December 1932 he taught Slavic and Russian literature at the University of Turin. At the same time he worked as an editor for the publishing house Slavia in Turin, and helped Russian authors to publish their works in Italy. With Giulio Einaudi in 1933 he founded the publishing house Einaudi. In 1938 he married Natalia Ginzburg née Levi, which has since published her work under the name Ginzburg.

Ginzburg rejected fascism and was with Carlo Levi since 1929 head of the anti-fascist group Giustizia e Libertà. That's why he refused the oath of allegiance in 1934 to the fascist regime and lost his teaching license.

A short time later he was arrested for the Ponte Tresa affair, as near Ponte Tresa books had been smuggled across the Italian-Swiss border. They could not prove anything to him and let him free again. In 1935, he was arrested again, this time because of his activities for the Party for Justice and Freedom. In 1940 he was with Confino, landinternem exile, punished and banished to the Abruzzo after Pizzoli, where he remained until 1943. He was one of the founders of the operating underground Partito d' Azione, a party of resistance.

After the Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily on 10 July 1943, Leone went to Rome. There, however, he was arrested by the Gestapo and died after severe torture in the Roman prison Regina Coeli.