European day of the Righteous

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Day of the Righteous at Liceo Vittoria Colonna 6th March 2021

For one year now Italian schools and students have been facing the health crisis with all its restrictions and consequences on our habits and daily routines, our relationships&nbsp;and social&nbsp;intercourse. Nevertheless, students at Liceo “Vittoria Colonna” in Arezzo, Italy, are&nbsp;concerned about the issue of human rights and have decided to celebrate the Day of the Righteous, a very important date to remember and spread knowledge about men and and women all over the world who saved lives and defended human dignity.&nbsp; &nbsp;Each class has chosen their way to celebrate the date and express their feelings and ideas about human rights: a group drew a symbolic tree of the Garden of the Righteous made with significant words; some others decided to write or tell the life of a particular person, from different times and countries: people who risked or sacrificed their lives during the war or under totalitarianism, who helped other people in danger or fought injustice and organised crime, even very young boys and girls who fled their country trying to escape violence and war. Humanity has always had to deal with threats such as wars, persecutions or, as today, epidemic diseases, and therefore the presence and the action of righteous persons is particularly important; they are an example for everyone and can encourage all of us to become more disinterested, fair and generous in&nbsp;supporting each other in front of dangers and difficulties. The following pages show the contribution of our students to keep alive the memory and the examples of Righteous.

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En Volterra sólo había un judío. Era estimado e incluso amado. Era el único dentista de la ciudad. Se había casado con una católica. El Dr. Emerico Lukacs se encontró en la cima de los captores. Los otros en la lista eran partisanos y&nbsp;antifascistas. Lorenzo Lorenzini y su esposa Antonia no pensaron en ello. Tomaron la decisión de forma natural. Como si fuera la cosa más obvia del mundo. Fueron a advertir al Dr. Lukacs y lo escondieron en su casa. Quienes escondían a un judío tenían su propio fin. Fue a los campos de concentración con él. Hacer invisible al joven dentista, originario de Hungría, e impedir su captura no fue nada fácil. Tuvieron que trasladarlo varias veces, ayudados por sus abuelos y su cuñada Ilia, que hizo el papel de amante para encubrir un movimiento bastante peligroso. A pesar de los riesgos, se trataba de salvar una vida.

Samuele Ferrara e Filippo Bennati

Guelfo&nbsp;Zamboni was an Italian Diplomat born in 1897. During the second World War he was&nbsp;appointed Consul&nbsp;in Thessaloniki, in Greece, which was occupied by the Germans. The city had a large community of Sephardi Jews&nbsp;and when the German started to deport them to Poland&nbsp;he began to help them by giving them certificates of provisional Italian citizenship IN THIS WAY HE SAVED 350 Jewish people.&nbsp; In 1992 the State of Israel&nbsp;made him "Righteous among the Nations"&nbsp; He died in 1994.

Giulia Giaccherini, Aurora Pauzano e Roberta Maudente

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Rocco Chinnici was born in Misilmeri on January 19/1925 and he was a noted italian anti-Mafia magistrate killed by the Sicilian Mafia.He graduated in law at the University of Palermo in July 10/1947 and he started working as a magistrate in 1952,in Trapani.From 1954,year of birth of his first child Caterina ,he had been working for 12 years to the magistrates court in Partanna.In November 1979 he became head of the examining office at the Palermo court following the murder of his predecessor Cesare Terranova ,killed by the Mafia.Chinnici had a great intuition:in his office,he created some work teams,something revolutionary, "the anti-Mafia pool", a group of magistrates who closely worked togheter . On his side there were two young magistrates : Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino with whom he started the investigation that became in the 80's the greatest trials for Mafia.Rocco Chinnici didn't stop his activity in the courtrooms .He frequently spoke out against the Mafia in public appearances ,schools and break down "Omertà" (the law of silence that kept the Mafia alive ) at a time when judges had avoided the world for many years .Chinnici was killed on the 29&nbsp; July 1983 by a car bomb explosion in Palermo in front of his house togheter with the cartaker Stefano Lisacchi and the two bodyguards.In one of his last interviews he decleared :"I perfectly know Mafia can hit me anytime ,I'm not afraid of that ,I only hope that if it happens the man with me would not be armed".&nbsp;

Giacomo Bassi was born on 18th March 1896 in Gottro,in the italian province of Como. Thanks to Bassi’s intervention the Contente family were saved from deportation. A few days later,Paola decided to beg the town clerk,Dr.Giacomo Bassi for help. “Everyone said what a good man he was and that he had helped a lot of people.He gave us some blank documents and in this way we changed our identities” said Nissim Contente. Bassi gave them the name of a stamp manufacturer in Milan who could put the stamp of a Sicilian town on their identity cards. Giacomo Bassi died on 18th August 1968 in Gottro.On 6 September 1998 Bassi’s children (who knew nothing of their father’s deeds) were invited to Israel where the Yad Vashem nominated Giacomo Bassi Righteous among the Nations.

Irma Milanesi Morandini&nbsp;nació y vivió en el pequeño pueblo de Cosignano, en la provincia de Siena, de una familia de origen campesina. La mujer recibó acogió en su casa a judíos perseguidos por los facistas en el año 1943.&nbsp;El 6 noviembre del mismo año, cuando tenia 22 años, durante un rastreo hecho en Siena, ocultó la familia judía para la cual prestaba servicio.&nbsp; Renzo Azelio Castelnuovo, actualmente profesor en el Ateneo de Siena, sus padres y su hermano de apenas siete meses se salvaron de la deportación y de la muerte segura gracias a esta joven que, a pesar de la amenaza de una pistola apuntándole a la cabeza, no reveló el lugar donde escondió a su familia. Renzo recuerda que Irma acogió a su familia en su casa en Corsigliano, en el municipio de Castelnuovo Berardenga, y después de este período los envió a casa de sus conocidos. La familia le está agradecida. Durante la ceremonia en la que se entregó a la mujer la medalla de “Justos de la naciones" se hicieron intervenciones llenas de gratitud, estima y gran admiración hacia una persona sencilla que no tuvo miedo de poner en peligro su vida para salvar cuatro. Irma es un ejemplo de altruismo valiente.&nbsp; Irma Milanesi Morandini ha demostrado que sabe elegir el bien y no el mal: ha elegido la vida.

Marylove Takam Kanga e Gala Beloni

Elio Gallina&nbsp;was a notary&nbsp;in Treviso and he exploited his profession and his position to save the lives of many Jewish families.&nbsp; He&nbsp;regularly went to the town hall in Treviso to provide materials for false documents and&nbsp;until he was able to obtain visas and false document for expatriation to Switzerland&nbsp;he also hosted people in his own attic.&nbsp; Then he accompanied them to the registry office of the town hall in Treviso and with the cooperation of the mayor he let them get the&nbsp;fake documents. In 2007 when he was 97, he was recognized Righteous among Nations.

Chiara Casini, Giulia Giusti, Giacomo Danzi e Francesca Ferrini

Giorgio Perlasca was born on 31st january 1910 in Como, and he was an Italian businessman and former fascist who, with the collaboration of official diplomats, posed as the Spanish consul-general to&nbsp;Hungary, in the winter of 1944, and saved 5,218&nbsp;jews from deportation to nazi extermination camp in eastern Europe. Perlasca grew disillusioned with Fascism, in particular due to Benito Mussolini’s alliance with nazism and adoption of Italian racial laws, that came into force in 1938. During the initial phase of World War II, he worked at procuring supplies for the Italian Army in the Balkans. He was later appointed as an official delegate of the Italian government with diplomatic status and sent to Eastern Europe with the mission of buying meat for the Italian army fighting on the Russian front.. Italians had to choose whether to join Benito Mussolini's newly formed Italian Social Republic, which was fascist, or stay loyal to the King and join the Allies' side. Perlasca chose the latter. Perlasca worked with the Spanish Chargé d'Affaires, Ángel Sanz Briz, and other diplomats of neutral states to smuggle Jews out of Hungary. The system he devised consisted of furnishing 'protection cards' which placed Jews under the guardianship of various neutral states. He helped Jews find refuge in protected houses under the control of various embassies, which had extraterritorial conventions that gave them an equivalent to sovereignty. They could provide asylum for Jews. Perlasca chose to remain in Hungary. The Hungarian government ordered the Spanish Embassy building and the extraterritorial houses where the Jews took refuge to be cleared out. Throughout the winter, Perlasca was active in hiding, shielding and feeding thousands of Jews in Budapest. He continued issuing safe conduct passes (initiated by Sanz Briz), on the basis of a Spanish law passed in 1924 that granted citizenship to Jews : he also prevented the execution of a plan to demolish the Budapest Ghetto with around 60,000 people in it, as the Nazis had done in Warsaw.&nbsp; After the war, Perlasca returned to Italy. He never revealed to anyone, not even his family, his story of courage, unselfishness and solidarity. Until in the Eighties some Hungarian Jewish women started searching the Spanish diplomat who had saved their lives during the Second World War. Through the Budapest Jew community newspaper, they found him in Padua. In this way, his story emerged from years of silence. Giorgio Perlasca died on 15th August 1992. He is buried in the cemetery at Maserà, a few kilometers from Padua. He wished to be buried in the ground, with the words written in Jewish “Righteous Among Nations”.

Sophie Scholl was born on 9 May 1921 in Forchtenberg in Germany. When she was 12 she joined the Hitler Jugend, against the wishes of her father. She was very close to her older brother Hans and when he was arrested by Nazis she suffered a lot and this event reinforced her opposition to the Nazi regime. In May 1942 she went&nbsp;to Monaco to study at the university. Here she met some people who encouraged her to reflect how the christian living under the totalitarian regime. In the same year she became a member of '' White Rose'', a group of anti-nazi university students. She wrote a leaflets that incited people to take a non-violent stand against the third Reich. On 22 February she tried by the court because she found guilty of treason so she was guillotined, with Hans and their friends. A ''White Rose'' survivor said that Sophie was tortured by Gestapo for 4 days, she was the most active and sincere of the ''White Rose''. A few minutes before death the Gestapo chief asked her if she felt guilty for distributing these leaflets, she replied that she did not reset anything. In these leaflets the participants of the ''White Rose'' invite people to reject Hitler's dictatorial policies, disobeying the laws of the reich and re-offerming the principles of tolerance and justice. Sophie was discovered while she was throwing the leaflets down but the caretaker saw her, so she was arrested.Since 12 April 2011, a tree and a stone have been dedicated to Sophie Scholl at the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide in Milan.

Biografia di Bartali raccontata in tedesco da Melissa Bigiarini, Federica Goretti, Zen Fahed, Driton Abazi

Irena Sendler was born in Warsaw on February 15, 1910 from a socialist family. She spent his childhood in Otwock and after his father's death in February 1917, he moved to Warsaw with his mother. She was a careworker and&nbsp;before the construction of the ghetto she&nbsp;falsified documents to the Jews and looked for families who could keep the children because she understood&nbsp;the consequences of Hitler. In 1940 the situation became dramatic: a lot of Jewish were closed in the ghetto. Irena had a medical permission that allowed her to enter in the ghetto, she brought clothes, food, money and from which she made the children run away in bags. A clandestine organization helped her in this mission. 1000 children were escaped, who joined the other 1500 whose identity had been changed before the construction of the Ghetto,for avoid problems at the families. Sentenced to death, the organization, without her knowledge, corrupted the officer who had to kill her,and, returned free in February 1944, Irena resumed her clandestine activity until the liberation of Poland. She was brutally interrogated by the secret police who accused her of hiding soldiers from the Polish army,she&nbsp;was also pregnant and lost the baby. On October19,1965 Yad Vashem recognized Irena as Righteous Among the Nations. She died at 98 on May 12, 2008.

Dos justas son la monja Benedetta Pompignoli y la profesora Nella Bichi. En 1943 salvaron Miranda Servi Cividalli y su madre Pia Ajò Servi de la deportación.

Between 1943 and 1945,in Milan, Nilde Simonazzi, secretary of an important Israelite lawyer, gave relief to to Jews helping them to expatriate in Switzerland and favouring them in other ways.&nbsp;She used some rooms adiacent to the law firm as a meeting place for persecuted politicians and racials.&nbsp;Many Jews passing by or from other cities found refuge, comfort and sometimes financial help in her house or in her mother’s house, Luigia Bonora. With personal risk, she made some trips to Florence and Parma to bring help and act as an intermediary between the members of separate families and without news of each other.&nbsp;She went to Parma to take the children of the lawyer Anselmo Levi, Gisella and Giulio, and, passing through their mother, accompanied them to the Swiss border where they could reunite with their parents. But in the last months of the German occupation, Nilde was arrested after a search in the law firm, but she managed to save herself.&nbsp;She received the recognition of Righteous Among the Nations from Yad Vashem. Also Gisella Levi Caroti was present at the ceremony.

Leonilde Simonazzi was the secretary of an important Isralite lawyer who was Anselmo Levi. She saved a lot of Jewish people&nbsp; in very brave ways helping them to escape in Switzerland. She also travelled a lot to Florence and Parma to deliver news to the family that had been separated because of the persecution. She also went to Parma to take in safe the children of the lawyer Anselmo Levi, saying she was her mum and going with them to the border of Switzerland. One day police barged in and she got arrested but thanks to her courage she came out of this situation. She was put on the list of righteous by Yad Vashem.

Salah Farah was a teacher and the vice-president of a school in the city of Mandera. He was about 30 years old. On 20 december 2015, there had been an Islamic terrorist attack on a bus with 60 passengers, Christians and Muslims. During the attack Farah and other Muslims protected Christians from violence. He opposed the orders of the "al-shabaab terrorists", who wanted to kill Christians, after separating them from their Muslim fellows. Farah was the first one to oppose terrorists orders and he became an inspiration to his Muslim brothers. When the Muslims were forced to get off the bus, Muslim women gave their veils to the Christan ones. But the Muslims succeed in getting back on the bus and help the Christians run away. In all this struggle three people were killed and the other Muslims were injured badly. The deep wounds led Farah to death on 17 january 2016. The president of Farah's nation granted him great honors for his "act of courage". Frah said that: "People should live together peacefully. We are brothers. Only religion is different. Thus, I ask my Muslim brothers to take care of the Christians, and the Christians to take care of us... and let us help each other and live together in peace...".

Romanelli was sent to Budapest as a commander of the Italian delegation. He had to supervise the compliance of the work of the neo-republican Magyar. The climate in which Romanelli found himself operating was fraught with tension: the new republic was governed by Bèla Kun. On June 1919 a part of the so-called "white" army decided to get against the government. Kun's government managed to stop the uprising, ensuring that the perpetrators would not go unpunished: it decreed that all the participants were arrested and punished by hanging. As soon as Romanelli learned of what was happening in&nbsp; the country, he decided to act, thus breaking the strict armistice rules; his human gesture managed to save many insurgents. With the establishment of the dictatorship, reprisals against the anti-Bolsheviks arrived from the Italian Military Delegation from all over the country as Romanelli had become the only protector of the defenseless. At the fall of the dictatorship, on August 1, 1919, Romanelli with his great spirit also took care of the fate of Béla Kun himself and other red politicians. The white forces were starting the "hunt for the "Jew", and Romanelli felt obliged to help Kun and several members of the former government , given that the latter was madeby many Jewish exponents.&nbsp; Romanelli's commitment continued for several years: he spent himself against the unjustified arrests of the Hungarian Jews, and tried to obtain better living conditions for all the prisoners, regardless of religious and political belief. The Hungarians showed their deep gratitude by giving Romanelli the highest honors with the &nbsp; delivery of a sword of honor.

Yusra Mardini is a young Syrian swimmer. With the outbreak of war bombardement she fled the country with her sister. In August 2015 they swam for three and a half hours at night, for five km of sea trying to give direction to the dinghy, until the engine finally started again and the sisters managed to save all the shiwrecked. In September 2016, at the United Nations General Assembly, she called for the right of refugees to have access to safe housing, education, livelihoods and traning opportunities. In January 2017, she represented the UNHCR at the World economic Forum in Davos, where she was the youngest partecipant.

Yusra Mardini is a young Syrian swimmer, that, with the outbreak of war and bombardment, decided to leave the country with her sister Sarah, also a swimmer. In 2015 their rubber dinghy, which had to arrive on the Island of Lesbo, started to take on water because there were too many people on board, and they were too heavy. No one couldn't swim, so Yusra and Sarah dived into the sea and started to propel the dinghy; they had to swim for 3 and a half hours at night, until the engine started again. So they saved all the people on the boat. After being granted refuge status, Yusra went back swimming and at the 2016 Olympic Games, she was one of the best athletes and she had the right to have access to safe housing, education and also training opportunities.

"Siamo solo persone qualsiasi che hanno salvato un amico. Mica siamo eroi."

Carolyn Di Pietro e Anita Tondelli

Reinhold Crystman saved nearly 700 Jews, including many children during the Holocaust. He employed and hid them in a glass factory in Poland. He gave them work permits and created a shelter for the city’s children inside the factory and he founded a small family. He could have been denounced, but he went ahead anyway, risking his own life to save as many Jews as possible. He was an evangelical Christian, he never joined the Nazi party. He emigrated from Austria to Brazil in the late ’40s, where he died in the ‘60s.&nbsp; He received an award from the Anna Frank Memorial.

Pietro Martinetti was born in 1872 and he died in 1943.&nbsp;&nbsp;The best known story of him is when He refused to take the oath&nbsp;to the fascist regime in 1931 and to renounce the University chair rather. Among more than 1200 professors, only&nbsp;a dozen chose to leave the university chair to protest against the imposition&nbsp;of a political ideology on the free exercise of scientific research and culture. Martinetti was the only philosopher&nbsp;to take this onerous step. This wasn’t an isolated act, but the seal of a moral conduct inspired by civil intransigence. He began famous for this act.&nbsp; The moral courage shown, combined with the serenity of a faith in the sacredness of the values of Justice and Freedom, make him a master of moral and a righteous man, who would deserve to be better known and more properly remembered.

Kang Chol-hwan was born in 1968 into a wealthy family. His grandparents had emigrated to Japan in the Thirties and they had settled in Kyoto where they had established a successful business. In the Sixties, North Korea, under the leadership of&nbsp;Kim-Il sung, launched a campaign to persuade Korean emigrants in Japan to return to their native country. Kim-Il sung explained that the country needed their skills,&nbsp;that they would had a nice house and everything they wanted so Chol-hawan’s family decided to move back into an elegant district in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. At school children were taught that the Great Leader was safeguarding the power and the independence of their country against&nbsp;Seoul’s imperialism and Chol-hawan’s family supported the Kim-Il sung regime.&nbsp; However, in July 1977 his grandfather disappeared without trace and without any&nbsp;explanation on the part of authorities. Then, every member of the family, expect the mother, was arrested and interned in the Yodak labor camp.&nbsp;Kang Chol-hawan was just nine years old. This was just the beginning of ten year’s forced labor, humiliation, malnutrition and disease. The boy had so much hunger that he had to kills rats to ensure food for himself and his family. Torture was inflicted for futile reasons, prisoners were forced to attend the executions of friends and family members. In 1987 the family was suddenly released and transferred to a village in the same district as the Yodak camp, where they lived in poetry and in a state of partial freedom. In 1992 Kang was placed under special surveillance because he had a radio with which he listened to programs broadcast by South-Korea. To avoid detention in Yodak his only hope was escape. He managed to corrupt a smuggler on the Chinese border and from there he reached Dalin where, thanks to the help of a woman whose identity has never been revealed, he embarked on a ship for Seoul. When he arrived there he was subjected to intense interrogation to check the authenticity of his story and make sure he wasn’t a spy sent by North Korea. After about six months he met Pierre Rigoulot, the men in charge of meeting refugees for the International society for Humans Rights.&nbsp; Rigoulot suggested to write a book of Kang’s story that has been translated into Italian by Mondadori with the title “L’ultimo Gulag”.

Carlo Bianchi was born in Milan on March 22, 1912 and he became engineer. During the war he became president of the FUCI in Milan and created an assistance centre called "la carità dell’arcivescovo”, a useful cover for the support of the politically persecuted, the Jews and the Resistance, but this activity didn’t last long. Between November 1943 and February 1944 he hosted Teresio Olivelli, wanted by the Fascist police, in his house and with him he promoted the project of an anti-fascist paper of Catholic inspiration close to the partisan groups of the Green Flames published from March 1944 to April 1946. Carlo Bianchi was also engaged in clandestine activities in Milan and on 27th April 1944, on the action of a comrade of the Fuci, he was arrested together with Teresio Olivelli in Piazza San Babila and transferred to the San Vittore prison. After a period of isolation and several interrogations, on June 9 he was transferred to the Fossoli concentration camp where he managed to send several messages to his family and where he tried to organize a network of solidarity and sharing with the other detainees. At dawn on July 12, 1944, by order of the German authorities, Carlo Bianchi and 69 other prisoners were transferred to the shooting range of Cibeno (Carpi) where they were shot and buried in a mass grave.

Carlo Angela&nbsp;was an Italian doctor. He was recognised as righteous among the nations for his efforts during the second world war in saving Jewish lives. &nbsp;He is the father of the journalist Piero Angela&nbsp; During the German occupation he was the director of the clinic for mental diseases in San Maurizio Canavese near Turin.&nbsp;There he offered a safe refuge to antifascista and jews by forging medical cards that Justified their stay inside the clinic.&nbsp; He wrote fake diagnosis and changed names or nationalities helped by his vice director and nurses and nuns there.&nbsp;His deeds were only revealed in 1995 and he was declared righteous among the nations in 2002.

Hanno partecipato al progetto: Annamaria Carbone e gli alunni della classe 3 F Maria Vittoria Ghezzi di 3 G, immagine di copertina Errico Landi e gli alunni della classe 4 L Maria Teresa Gallina e gli alunni della classe 2 F Silvia Tiezzi e gli alunni della classe 4 D Maria Cecilia Volpi, ebook

Francesco Bertoglio was born in February 1900 and he became a priest at 23.&nbsp; During the II World War&nbsp; he was the rector of the Pontifical Seminary in Rome and he managed to save 65 Jews from death and deportation to Auschwitz. He hid them in the building,&nbsp; disguised as students in the seminary. Together with some of them he was&nbsp; arrested during an inspection by the nazi-fascists,&nbsp; but he was later released under pressure of the Vatican authorities. In 2010 he was awarded the title of “Righteous among the Nations”. He died in Milan in 1978.

Tullio Vinay was a protestant&nbsp;theologian and a politician. He was born in 1909 and died in 1996. During the 2nd world War he was&nbsp;a pastor of the Waldensian Evangelical Church in Florence. From 1934 he had launched many antifascist activities and during the war he saved dozens of Jewish people by hiding them in a secret apartment in the seat of his church in via Manzoni.&nbsp; He was recognized Righteous among nations in 1982

Gioele Paggini, Davide Sestini e Samuele Surace

Reconocida Justa entre las Naciones en 2013. Obtuvo el reconocimiento del estado de Israel, desde que salvó a la familia Salmon de&nbsp; Persecuciones nazi-fascistas.&nbsp; Escondió a la familia en una granja de toros de su propiedad en San Prugnano en 1943. “En la noche del 6 de noviembre, la noticia de la redada antijudía llevada a cabo ese día en Florencia por los nazis y los fascistas, llegó a Volognano. Inmediatamente después de una cena muy breve, en la oscuridad de la noche, los cinco miembros de nuestra familia caminaron a pie, a través de campos y senderos, hasta Villa Cecchini para pedir ayuda y hospitalidad, que se les otorgó de inmediato con total comprensión y máxima generosidad, esperando del traslado al refugio después de dos días. Después del 24 de abril de 1944, Giuseppe D 'Ancona, el padre de Clara, también habría encontrado hospitalidad en ese refugio. "

San Zeno, 6 de noviembre de 1915, Sansepolcro, 10 de marzo de 2005 

Alojó en la rectoría del Trebbio los hebreos perseguidos por las leyes raciales y ayudó a los heridos en el hospital de Sansepolcro. Escribió un libro "Dalla prima all'ultima Guerra Mondiale", en la primera parte pasa de profesor a investigador y en la segunda parte es testigo de los hechos históricos de aquella época.&nbsp;

He was an American geophysicist and climatologist, he can be called the pioneer of climate change. His interest was born thanks to a friend Paul Gast in 1952. They have done an experiment, called Lamont Geological Observatory. His studies were based on the observation of the Ocean, since 1960 he has mapped the Ocean circulation and gas exchange with the atmosphere, demonstrating that the global oceanic flows&nbsp;were caused by the variation in the density of water masses. Wallace understood that with rising temperatures the precipitation patterns would also change and so new research was needed to understand, he predicted&nbsp;the&nbsp;future climate change. In the 1984 Wallace proposed to a Congress Committee a national plan to understand the dynamics of the atmosphere, because we need to limit the use of fossil fuels.&nbsp;He brought&nbsp;the attention of the International Community, and they were unable to listen to these warnings. He won the medal for Science in 1996. He died in 2019 but he had continued to discuss&nbsp;his projects and research until a few days before his death.

Wallace Broecker, an American geophysicist and climatologist was a professor at Columbia University in New York. He used to study the oceans and his relationship with the climate. In 1975 during the Cold War he published “The Climate Change: are we at the brink of a Pronounced Global Warming ?” He had already understood what we know about global warming and what we are fighting. In 1984 Broecker in front of a Congress Committee explained that “by continuing to pour greenhouse gasses into the air we will mess with the world”. In 1987 in the pages of Nature said: “We’re playing Russia roulette climate !” In 1996 very few people listened to him but he continued to discuss his projects until a few days before his death.

Galeata, 29 de julio de 1884,  Florencia, 2 de junio de 1958

Nacido en Galeata el 29 de julio de 1884 y muerto en Florencia el 2 de junio de 1958 fue un presbítero y antifascista italiano, incluido entre los justos entre las naciones por su obra en favor de los judíos en Florencia durante el Holocausto. Para la Iglesia católica tiene el título de venerable. En los años de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y, en particular, durante la ocupación alemana y la emergencia bélica, una vez más don Facibeni se convierte en un punto de referencia fundamental para su labor de asistencia a los refugiados y a los prófugos. Las casas de hospitalidad se multiplican en toda la Toscana: Calenzano, San Miniato, Montecatini, Fucecchio, Rovezzano. Como relató el propio Facibeni, en un informe sobre el paso del frente enviado a la curia florentina el 19 de enero de 1945: "desde finales de 1943 hasta su liberación, ha hospitalizado y mantenido a diez niños, tres mujeres, tres jóvenes y dos hombres judíos".

Gihan Zaroili e Amina Hamdoune&nbsp;

Michele Carlotto was born in 1890 in a village of the Veneto region.&nbsp; He became a priest in 1942 and was assigned to a church&nbsp;in Valli del&nbsp;Pasubio, where a group of 40 Slavic jews was in compulsory domicile.&nbsp; Together with other priests, the carabinieri&nbsp;and people from the&nbsp;village he managed to organise their escape&nbsp;to Switzerland or to hide them&nbsp;in isolated farmhouses in the countryside until they were liberated.&nbsp; His name&nbsp;was written&nbsp;on the wall of the righteous among the nations in&nbsp;1996.

Edoardo Mori, Matteo Capaccioli e Malak El-Zyraouy

Paul Gruninger was born on October 27 1981 in St.Gallen in Switzerland.&nbsp; He studied to become a teacher but never worked as it. Paul was always a hard worker and did many things. He stopped his career in teaching and he became a semi-professional soccer player and won the Swiss national championship&nbsp;with his team. Then, Gruninger joined the army and became a police officer; he was well liked in the service, so he quickly moved up the ranks. He also fought in the first world war for the Swiss army and luckly he survived the&nbsp;conflict. When&nbsp;Austria became annexed by Nazi Germany,Gruninger was given orders to send Jewish refugees back to Austria. He helped those who wanted to find asylum in Switzerland to let them in; he also gave them clothes and food because he&nbsp;was very empathetic to this people and worked very hard to help them. But people soon became suspicious of Gruninger’s work and he was put under investigation; on April 1939 he was arrested and then he had to pay fines and he was removed from his position&nbsp;and after the end of the war it was very difficult for him to find a job. So Paul Gruninger lived the rest of his life often unemployed and in bad conditions.&nbsp;He was recognized as a righteous in 1971, soon before his death.

Writer and soul of&nbsp;Charter 08, the manifesto for the rule of law in communist China. Liu Xiaobo, professor, writer, literature critic and Human Rights activist, and the first Chinese to win the Peace Nobel Prize in 2010, was born in Changchun on 28 December 1955. In 1988, he brillantly&nbsp;discussed his doctoral thesis. He was invited to hold lessons in Norway and at Columbia University in New York between 1988 and 1989. On 2 June, he launched together with three comrades a hunger strike to protest against the announced crackdown,ì. In the night of the massacre, between 3 and 4 June, he convinced the students about the necessity to negotiate&nbsp;with the army a peaceful evacuation.&nbsp; On 8 June, he was arrested in Beijind and spent 20 months in the Qincheng prison. In 1996, upon request of dissident Wang Xinzle he signed a petition for a new cooperation between the Kuomintang (Chinese National Party) and the communist party.&nbsp; He went on publishing his political chronicles in the Hong Kong press. The most famous one is “Charter 08”, the manifesto draw&nbsp;inspiration from Charter 77 by Havel. In 2009, Liu Xiaobo was arrested again and sentenced first to 11, then to 12 years in prison.&nbsp;In 2010, his wife Liu Xia was put under house arrest for seven years. Liu had cancer and at the first he refused the last treatments, because he hoped to access some therapeutic programmes abroad.

Maria Agnese Tribbioli&nbsp;was born on the 20th of April 1879 in Florence and she became a nun at the institution “Patrocinio di san Giuseppe”. In 1917 however she left the patronage and founded her own religious congregation, the&nbsp;“Pie Operaie” , in order to help the poor and orphans.&nbsp; During the II World War she answered the call of the local bishop to help and rescue the jews from the rounding-up operations of the nazi-fascists. She hid many of them in the cellars of the seat of the congregation, in the centre of Florence, preventing their deportation to the extermination camps. She&nbsp;died on 20th of February 1965 and in 2010 she was recognised by the Jewish community “Righteous among the Nations”. The Catholic Church has started her beatification process in 2017.

Anna Bidini, Cristina Barbetti e Marica Menchetti

Gino Signori fue reclutado en el ejército en 1941 mientras trabajaba en una granja lechera de Prato; el 17 de septiembre de 1943 fue hecho prisionero por los alemanes y fue internado en Hamburgo. Allí trabaja como enfermero especializado. Una noche en las cercanías de un hospital se encuentra con un grupo de chicas judías. Una de ellas, Hana, está siendo amenazada de muerte por un soldado de las SS armado. Gino Signori, en lugar de dejar curso al destino, decide intervenir pidiendo al soldado que le ahorre a la mujer a cambio de unos cigarrillos. Después de eso, escondió a la chica en una parte la habitación donde trabajaba. Cuando se ve obligado a mudarse, hace que la chica se disfrace como una hombre y sigue ocultándola hasta el final de la guerra. En los años ochenta Hana, gracias a los esfuerzos del camionero Giuseppe Bosio, logra contactar a Gino y llega a Prato para reunirse con él, comenzando el procedimiento de reconocimiento por el cual en 1984 Yad Vashem lo proclama "Justo entre las Naciones".

Teresa Di Natale e Elizabeth Mannelli

Calogero Marrone is a forgotten hero. He was a public servant from Sicily who refused to sign in the National Fascist Party and was imprisoned. Then&nbsp; he became&nbsp;the chief of the civil registry office in the town of Varese and moved there with his family. From his position he released&nbsp;hundreds of false identity cards in order to save Jews and anti-fascists.&nbsp; Unfortunately he was arrested after an anonymous tip off.&nbsp; He was detained and tortured but refused to speak. He was finally transferred to Dachau&nbsp;where he died in 1945.

Matilde Boccino, Anna Sorini e Lupu Daniela

Irena Sendler was born in Warsaw in 1910. During the Holocaust she worked for a unit&nbsp;established specifically to help Jews in hiding. As a nurse, she could enter in the Warsaw Ghetto, and between 1942 and 1943 she led hundreds of Jewish children out of the Ghetto to safe hiding places. The fraught parents of the children asked her if she could guarantee they will live, but she could only guarantee they would die if they stayed. "In my dreams," she said, "I still hear the cries when they left their parents." Many of the children were sent to the Family of Mary Orphanage in Warsaw, and to religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chomotow, and in Turkowice, near Lublin. The exact number of children saved by Sendler and her partners is unknown. On 20 October 1943, Sendler was arrested. Although she was the only one who knew the names and addresses of the families sheltering the Jewish children, she withstood torture, refusing to say even a single word. She was sentenced to death and sent to a prison, but underground activists managed to release her. This experience didn't stop her continuing her activity. After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. On October 19, 1965, Irena Sendler was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations. The tree planted in her honor stands at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations. She died in Warsaw in 2008. In hopes of one day uniting the children with their families, Sendler wrote the children's real names on slips of paper that she kept at home.When German police came to arrest her in 1943, an assistant managed to hide the slips, which Sendler later buried in a jar under an apple tree in an associate's yard. Some 2,500 names were recorded. The children had known her only by her code name Jolanta. Irena Sendler didn't think of herself as a hero. She claimed no credit for her actions. "I could have done more," she once said. "This regret will follow me to my death."

Claudia Giovannuzzi

Lorenzo Perrone (1904—1952) was born in Fossano, in Cuneo province, Italy. Maybe you are curious about the reason why he is on the list of righteous, well.. At the beginning of 1944, Primo Levi, a Jewish chemist and future writer, was deported to the forced labour camp at Auschwitz. One day during the summer of that same year, while working on building a wall, he overheard someone talking in the familiar parlance of his native Piedmont. Levi managed to talk to one of them, Lorenzo Perrrone, and to tell him about the terrible conditions of the deportees. From that moment until December 1944, in the spirit of true altruism Perrone, stole food from the kitchen to feed him, he found him a sweater to keep him warm and he corresponded with Levi’s family. Through Perrone, Primo Levi’s mother Anna Maria and his sister Ester, who were in hiding in Italy, managed to send him a parcel containing chocolate, powdered milk and clothing. Unfortunately at the end of December the man had to repatriate.The last meeting between the two men took place after a heavy allied bombardment. Thanks to Perrone, Primo Levi found the strength to survive, to cling to hope despite the desperate conditions of the lager.&nbsp;After the end of the war, having returned to Turin, Levi contacted Perrone and went to see him in Fossano. He later arranged for his admission to hospital in an attempt to cure the tuberculosis that eventually killed him. He also named both his children, Lorenza and Renzo, after him. In his books If this is a man and Lilit and other stories he remembered Lorenzo with profound gratitude.&nbsp;On 7 June 1998, Yad Vashem recognized Perrone as a Righteous among the Nations.

30 de noviembre de 1912, 13 de julio de 2015, Lucca

En 1999 fue reconocido como "Justo de las naciones" por su compromiso a favor de los judios perseguido durante la Segunda Guerra Mondial. Era el responsable de "La casa degli Oblati del Volto Santo" el lugar donde escondió casi mil judios. El 3 de diciembre de 2011 se inaugura, en su presencia, el "fondo documentación Arturo Paoli", una colección de imágenes, vídeos, escritos en testimonios de la larga vida que el sacerdote ha dedicado al prójimo. El fondo tiene su sede en la Fundación Banca del Monte di Lucca en la plaza San Martino en Lucca. El 25 de abril de 2006 recibió la Medalla de Oro al Valor Civil en manos del Presidente de la República, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.&nbsp;La motivación del reconocimiento, es en el esfuerzo dedicado a salvar la vida a los perseguidos por los nazis, en particular judíos, «En el transcurso de la última guerra mundial, con un espíritu cristiano encomiable y excluyendo virtudes cívicas, colaboró en la construcción de una estructura clandestina, que dio hospitalidad y asistencia a los perseguidos políticos y a cuantos escaparon a las redadas nazifascistas de la alta Toscana, logrando salvar a cerca de 800 ciudadanos judíos.&nbsp;Admirable ejemplo de gran espíritu de sacrificio y de solidaridad humana» — Roma, 25 de abril de 2006

Fiorenzuola, 16 de abril de 1902, Florencia, 1 de enero de 1992

Don Leto establece un comité de asistencia clandestino que actúa como terminal de ayuda internacional de los hebreos. Las responsabilidades de Don Casini son buscar alojamiento, proporcionar alimentos, proporcionar tarjetas de identidad falsificadas. El 26 de noviembre 1943 fue arrestado y después de un corto periodo de prisión, Casini es liberado, pero continúa su actividad clandestina de distribución de ayuda que continúa hasta el momento de la liberación. Su nombre está registrado en el Registro Oficial de Yad Vashem en Jerusalén y se plantó un árbol en su honor en la avenida de los justos.

&nbsp; Franco Basaglia is a well-known Italian psychiatrist and neurologist, born in Venice in 1924. Thanks to his teories and experience in the asylums of Gorizia and Trieste, he has restored the right and dignity of thousands of people. Men, women and boys, all dresses in a long grey coat, inmates and sometimes forced into straitjackets, subjected to icy baths and beds of restraint, with a wicked use of psycho-drugs. They have been able to take back their life and their time and the psychiatric hospital has become a place where weak people could be helped and saved. In 1949, Basaglia graduated in medicine at the University of Padua, then he specialized in nervous and mental illness. In 1958, he become professor of psychiatry at the University, but for some hostilities because of his revolutionary ideas, he decided to leave teaching to move to Gorizia, where he was appointed director of a psychiatric hospital. Here he come into contact with the real psychiatric reality, characterized by aberrant treatments inflicted on patients, not considered people in difficulty and to helped, but people to control and hidden. For this reasons, he began a struggle to restore these people’s dignity. First of all, electroconvulsive therapy was eliminated and pharmacological therapy was considered only a method of grating of faster rehabilitation. He tried to turn asylums into therapeutic communities, where doctor and patients have equal dignity and equal rights. Basaglia continued to support his battle against the psychiatric system of the time until 1977 he obtained the closure of the Trieste psychiatric hospital. And finally on 13 May 1978, two years before his death, was retified Law number 180, known as the Basaglia law, on psychiatric reform and leading to the closing of asylums. However, this law become operative only in mid-nineties. Franco Basaglia died in Venice, in 1980. The greatest merit of Franco Basaglia was to restore dignity of mental illness.

Kiichiro Higuchi was born in Minamiawaji, on the isle of Awaji, on 20 August 1888. During his training at the Army Officer School, he studied Russian, and for his fluency in this language he was sent to Vladivostok, then to Warsaw. He tried to get as much information as possible on what was happening in the country. Higuchi rose to a senior position in the Japanese imperial army and, at the end of the 30s, as it was more and more necessary for the Jewish population to flee, Higuchi was in touch with Abraham Kaufman, which helped Jews seeking shelter. After the Zionist Conference of the Jewish communities, where Higuchi was invited as a speaker, the Japanese Government armed himself against Higuchi but it did not stop him: he had the support of many young officers and lieutenant. He put in place a special train to allow the Jews to escape to China and he provided all the necessary papers for the operation.

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