Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti

Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti was born in Bologna. Her father Paolo Enriques was Jewish; her mother Maria Clotilde Agnoletti Fusconi was Catholic. Neither of her parents was religiously observant, so Anna Maria and her brother Enzo received a lay education. Her father was an important biologist who taught at various universities. Because of his job, the family moved to various Italian cities; he was in Naples, Sassari and finally in Florence. Anna Maria attended her studies at the Liceo Classico Michelangelo in Florence.[2]

In 1926 she began studying for her Letter and Philosophy degree.

In 1930 she obtained her degree discussing her thesis with Nicolaj Ottokar. This encounter was extremely important for her. Nicolaj had come from a Siberian University and during his stay in Russia, he had been a witness to the activities that led to the October Revolution in 1905. He taught in Florence for 30 years starting exactly in the same years when Anna enrolled to her Letter and Philosophy course.

After her graduation in Paleography and Archival, Anna Maria won, in 1932, the contest for “adjoint assistant in trial” and was assigned to the State Archive of Florence[3]

In 1936 she was appointed “first archivist”, continuing her collaboration with the Historical Italian Archive, with reviews and reports of books and conferences. Between 1936 and 1938 Anna's conversion to Catholicism came to perfection, being the result of a spiritual research which had lasted for many years and directed her life decisions until her death.

In 1938 the Italian Racial Laws were approved in Italy, resulting in an interruption of Anna's studies and carrier, her being a Jew.

With the Racial Laws it was forbidden for Jews to serve in the Army, to be a guardian, to be a company owner, to be a land and a building owner and to have "Aryan" households. Jews were also dismissed from military and civil administrations, from provincial and municipal bodies, from banks, from insurance and from teaching in schools, whatever rank and order it was. At last, Jews students could no longer be accepted in State schools.

Anna was fired from the State Archive in a moment of economic instability for her family. In those years the most important figure for Florentine Catholicism was Giorgio La Pira, Anna had a relationship of esteem and affection with him. La Pira in 1939 founded a magazine called "Principi" for showing "the abyss of war towards which we are running". This magazine was very important for Anna’s intellectual formation.[4]

Giorgio La Pira helped her to find a new job: he accompanied her brother Enzo to the Archbishop of Florence and thanks to him Anna was hired at the Vatican Library. Anna lived with the nuns, sharing the room with Tea Sesini; the two girls were colleagues at the Vatican Library and also fight comrades. In 1940 Italy joined the World War II. At the Vatican Library there was turmoil because were emerging a lot of anti-fascist movement.

Anna befriended a priest and thanks to him came in contact with some intellectuals like Gerardo Bruni, graduated in philosophy at the Sapienza University, who had been involved in the Italian Popular Party.

From Gerardo Bruni and Anna Maria, and other few friends, the first nucleus of the Christian Social group was born, which would develop in a movement and finally in a political party. In 1943 Anna Maria left her job and came back to Florence to stay near her mother, who had been left alone. Here she began to take part in the Italian resistance movement, assisting Jewish families, providing them with identity paper.[5] She often accompanied them to the City Council for the notarial acts. She was betrayed by a fascist informer, greeted at home after that he had appeared, exasperating for an old official, with the name of “Social Christian Friends of Roma”. It was the 12th may 1944: Anna and her mother were arrested. After 3 days Anna was taken to Villa Triste.

Villa Triste is the popular name of various torture places opened by Nazi-fascists during the last years of World War II. Of particular relevance were the Villa Triste in Florence, Rome and Milan.

Villa Triste in Florence is still in Via Bolognese 67. The Germans granted the Fascists the use of the lower floors and basements of the block of flats, where Commander Mario Carità organized the Special Services Department, an institution in which criminals of all kinds flowed in exchange for a sort of amnesty.

At Villa Triste the convicted were questioned while lying on a sort of fakir’s bed, were forced to drink oil, and subjected to tortures of various kinds, as receiving electric shocks on the genitals, or forced assumption of salt. All the tortures were executed by many people who were drunk with cognac or used cocaine, and who were continually changing.

When the tortures were not enough to convince the prisoners to confess, the shooting was carried out. Anna Maria was tortured and forced to stand for seven days without sitting and without sleeping before being shot.

It seems that among the participants to the sadistic interrogatory there were even religious men, including a benedictine monk, Father Ildefonso, who amused himself playing Neapolitan folk songs on the piano during the tortures.

On 12 June Anna was collected by some fascists and nazists and, in spite of being the only woman with the six young men of the Cora group, she was brought to Cercina, a little place on the hills North of Florence, and she was shot; their bodies were abandoned at the stake.

Radio CORA (acronym of Commissioner Radio) was a clandestine broadcasting station, managed by the members of the florentine Action Party, that on 1944, from January to June, preserved contact between the Italian resistance movement and the allied commands. The creators of the initiative were a group of young people, including Enzo Enriques Agnoletti, who could count on the support of some twenty collaborators.[6]

The activity of the clandestine radio, which took care of transmitting the information about German activity in Florence to the allied commands and to request help for the partisans, was so important that on 2 June 1944 the allies airdropped some men in Prato to help the radio. Anna Maria was killed on ten days later in Sesto Fiorentino at the age of 37. Shortly afterwards, the liberation arrived in Florence, too.

Gold Medal for Valor (26 March 1833 – 10 May 1943)

After death, Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti, was decorated with the Medaglia d'oro al Valor Militare (Gold Medal of Military Valor),[7] accompanied by the following reason: -«Immemore dei propri dolori, ricordò solo quelli della Patria; e nei pericoli e nelle ansie della lotta clandestina ricercò senza tregua i fratelli da confortare con la tenerezza degli affetti e da fortificare con la fermezza di un eroico apostolato. Imprigionata dagli sgherri tedeschi per lunghi giorni, superò con la invitta forza dell'animo la furia dei suoi torturatori che non ottennero da quel giovane corpo straziato una sola parola rivelatrice. Tratta dopo un mese dal carcere delle Murate, il giorno 12 giugno 1944, sul greto del Mugnone, in mezzo ad un gruppo di patrioti, cadeva uccisa da una raffica di mitragliatrice: indimenticabile esempio di valore e di sacrificio.» — Firenze, 15 maggio - 12 giugno 1944.

Here is the translation:

-"Forgetful of their pain, she remembered only those of her country; and in the dangers and anxieties of the clandestine struggle she sought relentlessly the brothers to comfort with the tenderness of the affections and to fortify with the firmness of a heroic apostolate. Imprisoned by German Germans for long days, she overcame with the invincible strength of the soul the fury of his torturers who did not get from that young body a single revealing word. On June 12, 1944, a month after being taken out of the Murate Prison, in the Mugnone Greto, in the midst of a group of patriots, She was killed by a gunshot bomber: an unforgettable example of value and sacrifice. " - Florence, May 15 - June 12, 1944.

• In memory of the partisan, her name was given to the Second Level College of Science "A.M.E. Agnoletti" with headquarters in Sesto Fiorentino and Campi Bisenzio, and to the primary schools of Rimaggio-Padule in Bagno a Ripoli https://web.archive.org/web/20161031025801/http://www.icmattei.gov.it/primaria-rimaggio/ and Enriques-Capponi in Florence.

• Bocci, Enrico; Lucia Tumiati Barbieri (1969). Enrico Bocci – Una vita per la libertà, Testimonianze.... Firenze: Casa Editrice Barbèra.
• Carlo Francovich, Carlo (1962). La Resistenza a Firenze. Firenze: La Nuova Italia.
• La Rocca, Gilda (2004). La radio Cora di piazza d'Azelio e le altre due stazioni radio. Firenze: Editrice "La Giuntina".
• Onorati, Ugo (2010). Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti partigiana nei Castelli Romani. Marino: Sezione ANPI "Aurelio del Gobbo" di Marino; Provincia di Roma; Associazione ONLUS "Senza Frontiere".