Giliana Berneri
| Giliana Berneri (Italian) Giliane Berneri (French) |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
5 October 1919 Florence, Tuscany, Italy |
| Died | 19 July 1998 Paris |
| Occupation | Communist libertarian activist Medical doctor |
| Spouse(s) |
Serge Ninn (real name Jean Senninger) |
| Children | Hélène Senninger 1950 Franck Senninger 1955 |
| Parent(s) |
Camillo Berneri |
Giliana Berneri or Giliane Berneri (5 October 1919 – 19 July 1998) was a French doctor of medicine and a libertarian communist activist.
Giliana Berneri was the second daughter of the eminent Italian anarchist and academic Camillo Berneri and his similarly focused wife Giovanna Berneri (born Giovanna Caleffi). Giliana and her sister were born in Tuscany, but the family fled to France in 1926 in order to escape the Fascist Mussolini government. The father's scathing anti-Fascist newspaper articles had marked the family out for persecution. In France he was unable to find permanent employment, and frequently went into hiding to avoid the unwelcome attentions of the Italian Security Services. Nevertheless, there was considerable solidarity among the political anti-Fascist exiles in Paris and eventually Giovanna, the girls' mother, was able to set up a fruit and vegetable shop in a popular quarter. Money continued to be short, but the family survived and the daughters' education was financed. Both of the daughters qualified as medical doctors. Giliana's specialisms became Pediatrics and Psychoanalysis.
On 5 May 1937 her father was assassinated, together with his friend and fellow anarchist Francesco "Ciccio" Barbieri, in Barcelona. They were dragged off by a gang of a dozen men, and their bodies were found riddled with bullets the next day. Although the killers and the sequence of events in the hours before the killings were never precisely identified, it quickly became believed that Camillo Berneri had been murdered on Stalin's orders after his journalism had highlighted Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Although Giliana pursued her medical studies with continued energy, the circumstances of her father's provided her with a compelling motivation to continue with her father's political work, and it is for her political activity that she is more widely remembered.
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