Leone Ginzburg

Leone Ginzburg (born Lev Fyodorovich Ginzburg; 4 April 1909 – 5 February 1944) was an Italian editor, writer, journalist and teacher, as well as an important anti-fascist political activist and a hero of the resistance movement. He was the husband of the renowned author Natalia Ginzburg and the father of the historian Carlo Ginzburg.

Early life and career Ginzburg was born in Odessa, then part of the Russian Empire, to Jewish parents Fyodor Nikolayevich (born Tankhun Notkovich) Ginzburg, from Vilno Governorate, and Vera (born Khava Golda) Griliches, from Saint Petersburg, who had married in 1894. His father was an industrialist, while his mother was a social worker. His natural father was actually an Italian man, Renzo Segré, with whom his mother had a brief affair. Ginzburg had two older half-siblings, Marussia (1896–1994) and Nicola (1899–1985). The family members were all politically aligned, with positions ranging from Fyodor's liberalist views to Marussia's revolutionary socialist sympathies.

Since 1902, Italian educator and governess Maria Segré (Renzo's sister and Leone's biological aunt) had been teaching the Ginzburg children French and Italian; her presence fostered the family's contacts with Italy, with frequent trips to Tuscany beginning in 1907. From 1910 onwards, Leone was taken to Viareggio on vacation every summer. The Ginzburg family briefly followed the father to Berlin, where Leone attended a Russian high school between 1921 and 1923, before they all, except Fyodor (who died in Berlin in 1930), permanently moved back to Turin; This school molded a group of intellectuals and political activists who would fight Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime and, eventually, help create the post-war democratic Italy: his teachers included Umberto Cosmo and Zino Zini,

In the early 1930s, Ginzburg taught Slavic Languages and Russian Literature at the University of Turin, and was credited with helping introduce Russian authors to the Italian public. In 1933, Ginzburg co-founded, with Giulio Einaudi, the publishing house Einaudi. He lost his teaching position in 1934, having refused to swear an oath of allegiance imposed by the Fascist regime.

Persecution and internal exile

Soon after this, he and 14 other young Turinese Jews, including Sion Segre Amar, were arrested for complicity in the so-called "Ponte Tresa Affair" (they were carrying anti-fascist literature over the border from Switzerland), but Ginzburg's sentence was light. He was arrested again in 1935 for his activities as leader (with Carlo Levi) of the Italian branch of Giustizia e Libertà ("Justice and Freedom"), the party which Carlo Rosselli had founded in Paris in 1929.

In 1938, he married Natalia Levi. The same year he lost his Italian citizenship when the Fascist regime introduced the Manifesto of Race and the antisemitic racial laws.

Somehow, Leone was able to continue his work as head of the Einaudi publishing house throughout the period. In 1942, he co-founded the clandestine Partito d'Azione ("Action Party"), which became part of the democratic resistance. He also edited their newspaper L'Italia Libera.

Works Scrittori russi (1948) Scritti (1964)