Partisan Diary: A Woman's Life in the Italian Resistance

Ada Gobetti's Partisan Diary is both diary and memoir. From the German entry into Turin on 10 September 1943 to the liberation of the city on 28 April 1945, Gobetti recorded an almost daily account of events, sentiments, and personalities, in a cryptic English only she could understand. Italian senator and philosopher Benedetto Croce encouraged Ada to convert her notes into a book. Published by the Italian publisher Giulio Einaudi in 1956, it won the Premio Prato, an annual prize for a work inspired by the Italian Resistance (Resistenza). From a political and military point of view, the Partisan Diary provides firsthand knowledge of how the partisans in Piedmont fought, what obstacles they encountered, and who joined the struggle against the Nazis and the Fascists. The mountainous terrain and long winters of the Alpine regions (the site of many of their battles) and the ever-present threat of reprisals by German occupiers and their fascist partners exacerbated problems of organization among the various partisan groups. So arduous was their fight, that key military events--Italy's declaration of war on Germany, the fall of Rome, and the Allied landings on D-Day --appear in the diary as remote and almost unrelated incidents. Ada Gobetti writes of the heartbreak of mothers who lost their sons or watched them leave on dangerous missions of sabotage, relating it to worries about her own son Paolo. She reflects on the relationship between anti-fascist thought of the 1920s, in particular the ideas of her husband, Piero Gobetti, and the Italian resistance movement (Resistenza) in which she and her son were participating. While the Resistenza represented a culmination of more than twenty years of anti-fascist activity for Ada, it also helped illuminate the exceptional talents, needs, and rights of Italian women, more than one hundred thousand of whom participated.

About the Author :
Ada Gobetti (1902-1968) was a member of the Italian Resistance. Jomarie Alano is a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University's Institute for European Studies.

Review :
"Ada Gobetti's Partisan Diary is a classic text of the Italian Resistance and its publication in English translation is most welcome. It is doubly important as both political and personal testimony: one that clearly explains the ideology of the Action Party while documenting the critical contributions of Italian women in the fight against Fascism and Nazism. Fundamental for an understanding of anti-fascism and World War II, and critical for gender and memory studies, it reminds us--with its eloquence and powerful poignancy--of the perennial struggle against Fascism in all its myriad forms."--Stanislao G. Pugliese, editor of Fascism, Anti-Fascism and the Resistance in Italy "Ada Gobetti gave the world the gift of her memoir, Diario partigiano, and now Jomarie Alano has given us the gift, at long last, of the English translation of this extraordinary testimony of everyday life and activism in the Italian Resistance. Alano is Gobetti's biographer as well as her translator; as such, she is uniquely suited to the task of bringing Gobetti's memoir to a wider public. Thanks to Alano's introduction, readers will appreciate Ada Gobetti's activism for what it was: a lifelong struggle, from the early days of the antifascist movement in the 1920s through the women's liberation movement of the '60s and '70s. Partisan Diary is an extraordinary primary source for historians of Resistance, gender, and fascism."--Paula Schwartz, Lois B. Watson Professor of French Studies, Middlebury College "Ada Gobetti's Partisan Diary is a fundamental text for any in-depth understanding of the personal and political complexities of the partisan struggle. Now made available for the first time in English, Ada Gobetti's book offers a narrative of the Italian resistance that is unique in its details, point of view and voice."--David Ward, author of Piero Gobetti's New World: Antifascism, Liberalism, Writing