Ginetta sagan biography of michael jackson

Italian human rights activist

Ginetta Sagan (June 1, 1925 – Sage 25, 2000) was an Italian-born American human rights activist finest known for her work link up with Amnesty International on behalf advance prisoners of conscience.

Born in vogue Milan, Italy, Sagan lost on his parents in her teenage duration to the Black Brigades regard Benito Mussolini.

Like her parents, she was active in representation Italian resistance movement, gathering wisdom and supplying Jews in lashing. She was captured and torturous in 1945, but escaped air strike the eve of her performance with the help of Dictatorial defectors.

After studying in Town, she attended graduate school intrude child development in the Eclectic and married Leonard Sagan, unblended physician.

The couple then relocated in Atherton, California, where Sagan founded the first chapter replicate Amnesty International in the flatter US. She later toured greatness region, helping to establish further than 75 chapters, and uninhibited events to raise money select political prisoners.

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

Oddity President Bill Clinton awarded quota the Presidential Medal of Selfdirection in 1996, and Italy subsequent awarded her the rank give a rough idea Grand Ufficiale Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana (Grand Ex cathedra Order of Merit of influence Italian Republic). Amnesty International supported an annual Ginetta Sagan Premium for activists in her deify.

Childhood and World War II

Ginetta Sagan was born in City, Italy, to a Catholic sire and Jewish mother.^[1] Both racket her parents were doctors.^[2] Coating rising antisemitism in Europe, spurn parents arranged false papers naming her as Christian to take cover her Jewish roots.^[2]

When World Armed conflict II began, both of time out parents became active in righteousness Italian resistance movement opposing fascistic rule, only to be prevent in 1943 by Mussolini's Sooty Brigades.^[3] Her father was adjacent shot in a staged "attempted escape", and her mother kink to Auschwitz, where she was murdered.^[1][4]

Ginetta, then seventeen years handhold, was already active in grandeur resistance movement, delivering food coupons and clothing to Jews who were in hiding.^[3] Following cook parents' disappearance, she became clean up courier for resistance forces expose Northern Italy, as well importance helping to print and give out antigovernment pamphlets.

On one time, she dressed as a cleansing lady to steal letterhead take the stones out of government offices so that opinion could be used to construct letters of safe passage appoint Switzerland.^[2] Due to her ability and small size (she not ever grew to more than pentad feet tall),^[1] she received influence nickname Topolino ("Little Mouse").^[5]

In analyse February 1945, Sagan was betrayed by an informer in ethics movement and, like her parents, arrested by the Black Brigades.^[3] During her 45 days clasp imprisonment, she was beaten, sacked, and tortured, leading up package a scheduled April 23 act.

At one point, a gaoler tossed her a loaf portend bread that contained a matchbox with the word coraggio ("courage") written inside, a moment which would motivate much of cook later work on behalf be totally convinced by prisoners.^[5] On the day closing stages her scheduled execution, she was being beaten by guards doubtful a villa in Sondrio, Italia, when a pair of Teutonic officers forced her Italian captors to release her into their custody.

She later recalled complying the stars from the looking-glass of their car and conclusions, "I will never see in the opposite direction dawn." However, the Germans beat themselves to be Nazi defectors collaborating with her resistance band, and they delivered Sagan securely to a Catholic hospital.^[1] Sagan annually celebrated the date possession April 23 for the take the weight off one of her life.^[5]

Post-war life

After Sagan recuperated, she lived in Town for a time with time out godfather, attending the Sorbonne.^[4] Generate 1951, she emigrated to significance US to study at influence University of Illinois at City, majoring in child development.

After a long time there, she met Leonard Sagan, then a young medical proselyte. The couple were married depiction following year, and would tarry together until Leonard's death interpose 1997.^[3] Following their marriage, position pair moved to Washington, D.C. for Leonard's work. Sagan extremely worked part-time teaching cooking advice to the wives of Target Congressmen.^[1]

The couple later lived assume Boston and Japan before settle in Atherton, California, in 1968.

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

Involvement with Exoneration International

Though Amnesty International (AI) locked away a growing reputation in excellence UK, at this time, honesty organization was still in fatefully unknown in the US.

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

The chapter adjacent grew into AI USA's pull it off west coast regional office.^[4]

In 1971, Sagan organized a concert swing at singer Joan Baez, one another her Atherton neighbors, in disquiet to raise money for Hellene political prisoners; the concert thespian more than 10,000 people.^[1] Bland her memoirs, Baez described Sagan during the period as securing "the gifts of an energetic mind, a love of entity and beauty, an unquashable character, and a faith in fill very much like that claim Anne Frank."^[6] In the yoke years that followed, Sagan take a trip throughout the American West, foundation 75 more AI chapters.

Unreceptive 1978, AI USA's membership challenging increased to 70,000, more best 100 times that of dinky decade before. An AI backer later attributed Sagan with experience more than anyone to start Amnesty International in the Chivalrous, adding that "I think she has probably organized more group than anyone else in influence human rights movement globally".^[1] She also founded the organization's chief newsletter, Matchbox, in 1973.^[1]

Sagan became a figure of controversy disseminate the right and later suffer the loss of the left in the Decennary when she and Baez shifted their focus from protesting abuses by American forces in authority Vietnam War to protesting honourableness abuses of North Vietnamesereeducation camps following the war.^[7] A co-worker remembers fellow anti-war activists yield "furious" that Sagan would estimate the new Vietnamese communist conditions in the same terms she had criticized the US Organized Forces,^[5] and Sagan later set accusations that she was systematic fascist or undercover CIA operative.^[2] Over the next decade, she also advocated on behalf lady prisoners in Chile, the USSR, Poland, and Greece.^[1] She served on the AI USA Resolute Board of Directors from 1983 to 1987.

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

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

Awards

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

In 1996, US President Bill Clinton awarded Sagan the Presidential Medal replica Freedom, the highest civilian bless of the US.

In honourableness citation, he stated that "Ginetta Sagan's name is synonymous set about the fight for human aboveboard around the world. She represents to all the triumph weekend away 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 expert $20,000 annual award to spiffy tidy up woman or women "who musical working to protect the selfdetermination and lives of women obscure children in areas where anthropoid rights violations are widespread".^[10]

Previous winners of the award include description 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 post 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