Would you risk your life for the well beings of others? The winner of the 1936 and ‘37 Giro d’Italia and the 1938 Tour de France became much more than a world famous biker once World War II started. He fought for others and his country. Influenced by his early life experiences, celebrity biker Gino Bartali aided Jewish people to escape Italy during WWII, ultimately saving hundreds of lives and gaining him world wide renown. Gino Bartali found motivation through the hardships his family and friends endured. Gino’s younger brother was killed in a biking accident, and although Gino was also hurt, it pushed him to continue riding (Road to Valor, a True Story). When Bartali was young, his father was part of a movement against a Fascist dictator. Bartali’s father advised him “to steer clear of politics”(Racing for his Life - and his Country’s). But Gino found politics unavoidable later in his life. The National Fascist party attempted to control his biking career (Racing for His Life -- and His Country’s), “Mussolini and the Fascist regime used sport as propaganda and interfered with Gino’s athletic career”(Road to Valor, a True Story). which made Gino more frustrated and rebellious towards the Fascist party. Once the war began in 1939, Bartali became a brave bike messenger, risking his already poor health and career, and was soon “recruited” for Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa’s secret resistance effort to safely and legally escape from Italy (Road to Valor, a True Story). Although Gino did not know it yet, the lives of hundreds of Jews would rest on his decision to join the secret resistance. Through Bartali’s quick and deliberate thinking, he managed to disguise his efforts to help Jews escape Italy. Using his popularity... ... middle of paper ... ...onin, Claire. "Road to Valor, a True Story." Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale, 2012. Web. . "Italian Cyclist Gino Bartali Saved Jews during WWII by Shuffling Papers Hidden in His Bike." Fox News. FOX News Network, 10 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 May 2014. . “Gino Bartali” Zanobini, Marta. Personal Account. "Rescuer Story: Gino Bartali." Gino Bartali. Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, 2012. Web. 05 May 2014. . Santoro, Gene. "Racing for His Life -- and His Country's." Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale, 2012. Web. .
Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, was captured on December 13, 1943 by the Facist Militia during World War II. He was taken by train from Italy to Auschwitz, one of the worst concentration camps in all of Europe. While he was imprisoned, he was put through many terrible ordeals and faced death a number of times. Through his intense struggles, he depicted each moment with procission so that he could eventually combine them into a memoir. By using a rather mournful tone, he created his memoir in order to inform his audience of his heart-wrenching story and encourages them to participate in the lives of the facist prisoners before their liberation.
In Unbroken: A world war 2 story of survival, resilience, and redemption- by Laura Hillenbrand; young Louie Zamperini is a delinquent of Torrance, California. He steals food, runs around like hell and even dreams of hoping on a train and running away for good. However, Pete, his older manages to turn his life around by turning his love of running from the law into a passion for track and field. Zamperini is so fast that he breaks his high school’s mile record, resulting in him attending the olympics in berlin in 1936. His running career however was put on hold when World war 2 broke out, he enlisted in the the Air Corps and becomes a bombardier. During a harrowing battle, the “superman” gets hit numerous times with japanese bullets destroying
Louis “Louie” Zamperini went from the Terror of Torrance to a World War II hero. He grew from a young boy, who terrorized his town, into a record breaking runner, who competed in the Olympics. He later joined the United States Army Air Forces and served as a bombardier in World War II. After his plane crashed and he was stuck on a raft in the ocean, he was captured by the Japanese and became a prisoner of war. Louie’s resourcefulness, toughness, and defiance from his boyhood helped him to survive the relentless torment thrown at him later in life.
He was a photographer who brought attention to the living conditions of immigrants in america. Immigrants were living upwards of 12 people in a room. Rooms without ventilation, or indoor plumbing, the unsanitary conditions made for an unhealthy cycle of disease. Cholera, and tuberculosis were very common in this time, because they lacked the knowledge we know today. The italians had never encountered such problems as this. In Italy, while they lived in close quarters, they also spent a large portion of their time outside. Not only were there homes unsafe, but also their work places.
Ginsborg P (1990). ‘A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics: 1943-1980’ Published by Penguin; Reprint edition (27 Sep 1990).
DeMyers, Sandra. "Intro to the Hero's Journey." Loyno.edu. Northshore High School, 21 June 2000. Web. 26 Nov. 2013.
Frank Foley didn’t ever care for his hunger, thirst, or health overall, but he cared only about the health of the Nazi prisoners. He broke German laws just to save Jews. He was a true hero.
“If you save one life it is as if you have saved the world” ( zmdhfgcsmjv ). Heroism is not defined by the number of people who know your name or the numbers of awards you have received. However, heroism is defined by the impact an individual or a group of individuals makes on other’s lives. The Bielski Brothers were three men who made it their mission to save Jewish men, women, and children during the Holocaust. Not only did they save lives on a daily basis, but they were able to stop Nazi efforts. The impact they have made is monumental; today tens of thousands are alive because they decided not to give up. Even though the brothers risked their lives on a daily basis, they did not view themselves as heroes.
Mussolini’s population policy was a clear effort to exercise his authoritarian control over the people of Italy, regulating the most personal and private details of their lives. In his bid for complete control, he used new laws, propaganda, and sometimes brutal tactics in order for his wishes to be recognized. It is during the 1920’s to the 1940’s that totalitarian control over the state escalated into full dictatorships, with the wills of the people being manipulated into a set of beliefs that would promote the fascist state and “doctrines.”
YORK, LORRAINE. "Wars, The (1977)." Oxford Companion To Canadian Literature (1997): 1168. Literary Reference Center. Web. 9 Apr. 2014.
Since the beginning of its existence as a country, Italy has faced enormous challenges in establishing itself as a unified political and social entity. The geographic, economic, and linguistic differences between its various regions and the artificial manner in which they were amalgamated created a legacy of internal divisions that continues to dominate the country's political climate to this day. Italy's numerous historical fiascoes, such as its disastrous involvement in the two World Wars and the rise of fascism, further escalated the domestic problems that had haunted it since the Risorgimento. At first, the anti-fascist Resistance movement, which dominated the end of World War II, seemed to bring Italy a ray of hope, promising a new era of freedom, reform, and democratic representation. However, this hope was quickly extinguished, as widespread poverty, government corruption, and deep divisions between regions and classes persisted and no true social reform was attained. These harsh conditions were depicted by a group of Italian film directors whose neorealist works have since been celebrated as masterpieces of world cinema. One of the most prominent of these is Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief. This 1948 film discusses the prevalent themes dominating Italy's social and political history, within the context of the unsettlingly poor post-War urban proletariat.
In 1903, Nicola Gentile, a native of Siculiana, Sicily, finding no occupation in his village, came to America as a stowaway on a ship to soon begin his life full of crime. Although barely able to read and write, he believed that he possessed an uncommon strength of will to be sinister. This trait would soon help him to rise to the high rank in the Mafia. After arriving in America, he was amazed at the grand vastness of the buildings and streets he was surrounded by, but moreover, by the attitude of the new people around him. They walked briskly, giving him the impression that all had an urgent mission to perform.
As the world evolves so do the people within it, but without much surprise some things do not change that drastically and one of those things is the culture in which a person was born and raised. Even though ones culture or way of life may progress in some ways, it does not totally change. The topic of discussion for this paper will be that of the Italian culture. Who are they really? What types of challenges do they face? Many other topics will be discussed about the Italian society, but first we begin with the basic facts as to who they were.
In the 1930’s, when the Fascists rose to power in Italy, Mussolini had most of Cosa Nostra thrown in jail. This gave way to the Mafia’s sympathy to the American cause, or at least their hostility to the fascist one. “In reality, the relationship between the Fascists and the Mafia was ...
Primo Levi was an Italian Jewish Anti-fascist who was arrested in 1943, during the Second World War. The memoir, “If this is a Man”, written immediately after Levi’s release from the Auschwitz concentration camp, not only provides the readers with Levi’s personal testimony of his experience in Auschwitz, but also invites the readers to consider the implications of life in the concentration camp for our understanding of human identity. In Levi’s own words, the memoir was written to provide “documentation for a quiet study of certain aspects of the human mind”. The lack of emotive words and the use of distant tone in Levi’s first person narration enable the readers to visualize the cold, harsh reality in Auschwitz without taking away the historical credibility. Levi’s use of poetic and literary devices such as listing, repetition, and symbolism in the removal of one’s personal identification; the use of rhetorical questions and the inclusion of foreign languages in the denial of basic human rights; the use of bestial metaphors and choice of vocabulary which directly compares the prisoner of Auschwitz to animals; and the use of extended metaphor and symbolism in the character Null Achtzehn all reveal the concept of dehumanization that was acted upon Jews and other minorities.