Giuliana Tedeschi (1914–2010)

Giuliana Tedeschi, née Fiorentino, was born to a Jewish Italian family in Milan. She grew up in Naples, where her father, a pharmaceutical representative, had moved for work. In 1936, she graduated from the University of Milan with a degree in linguistics. The enactment of the Fascist racial laws in 1938 closed off her chances of a high school teaching career. In 1939, she married George Tedeschi, an architect, and moved to his hometown of Turin. The couple had two daughters. In 1944, Giuliana was arrested with her ​​husband and mother-in-law, and sent to the transit camp at Fossoli, and from there deported to Auschwitz. Her husband died in 1945 during the death march evacuation of Auschwitz. Giuliana was sent to the sub-camp at Birkenau, then to Ravensbrück and Malchow, where she survived to be liberated by Allied forces. She returned to Italy and found her two daughters alive. In 1946, she published Questo povero corpo (This Poor Body), one of the first memoirs by Italian Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps. In 1988, she published a second volume of memoirs, C'è un punto della terra… Una donna nel lager di Birkenau (There Is a Place on Earth: A Woman in Birkenau). She eventually did become a classical languages teacher in Turin and produced textbooks and anthologies, including -- with Alma Petrini -- Un Corso di lingua latina (A Latin Language Course (1966) and Un Corso di lingua greca (A Greek Language Course (1970).