Irma Bandiera

Irma Bandiera (1915–1944) was a member of the seventh Gruppo di azione patriottica. In 1944 she was captured, blinded, and killed. Enrico Berlinguer, of the Italian Communist Party, held her in high esteem. A street in her native Bologna is named for her and the song Mimma e Balella relates to her.

Biography Bandiera was born in 1915 to a well-off Bolognese family. Her father, Angelo, was in construction and became anti-fascist during the dictatorship. Her mother was Argentina Manferrati, and she had a sister, Nastia.

Following the armistice, Bandiera's boyfriend, a soldier, was taken prisoner by the Germans in Crete after 8 September 1943, and was lost at sea after the ship he was on was bombed and sunk off the port of Piraeus. In the evening she was arrested at her uncle's house, along with two other partisans. They were locked up in the schools of San Giorgio, but she was separated from her companions. She was then transferred to Bologna, where her captors hoped to obtain further information about the Resistance from her. Finally, the Fascists shot her point-blank at the Meloncello di Bologna, near her parents' house, on 14 August.

On 14 August Bandiera's body was found on the pavement near a factory, where her torturers had left her in open display for a whole day as a warning. Her body was then taken to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Via Irnerio where a guardian, a friend of the Resistance, took pictures of her face devastated by torture. Bandiera was finally buried in the cemetery of the Certosa di Bologna, in the company of family and some friends.

Bandiera is remembered in the Shrine of Piazza Nettuno and in the Monument to the Partisan Falls in Villa Spada.

On the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the Liberation, Bologna paid tribute to Bandiera in the neighbourhood where she was born and where she was later killed. The association CHEAP Street Poster Art and the duo of street artists of Orticanoodles (pseudonym of duo of Italian artists composed of Wally (born in Carrara) and Alita (born in Milan), chose for this the facade of the Bombicci, the school that claims a "democratic and anti-fascist vocation" purpose, and also to express how Bandiera was a national heroine and also daughter of the same district. A large mural was created using the pouncing technique, reproducing her smiling face as she was immortalized in one of her most famous photographs.