Ida De Vecchia: A Woman in the Transitions Between Fascism, Nazism, AMG and Italian Republic

Ida De Vecchi (1898-2006) is an example of the continuity of women’s political and associational action between the National Fascist Party (PNF) and in the neo-fascist party born in 1947, the Italian Social Movement (MSI). Her political parabola followed the fortunes of Trieste, passing through different historical and administrative phases: Kingdom of Italy, Nazi occupation (1943-45), Allied Military Government (1945-54) and finally Republican Italy. De Vecchi was one of the most prominent members of the Fascio Femminile in Trieste and Ljubljana Province (1941-43); after being imprisoned in Yugoslavia in 1945, she returned to Trieste where she became involved in the recovery of bodies from the “foibe” and assisted Istrian-Dalmatian refugees. In 1949 she was elected in the municipal elections in Trieste, obtaining the highest number of preferences among the MSI candidates, but given her PNF background her election was not ratified. Until her death she was a reference point for the Trieste MSI and beyond; she was president of the National Association of the Families of the Fallen and Missing of the Italian Social Republic and director of its official organ L’Ultima Crociata. Sources for my talk will be coeval newspapers, Prefecture papers and the minutes of the Trieste City Council.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matteo Perissinotto is member of the ERC project “EIRENE – Post-war transitions in gendered perspective: the case of the North Eastern Adriatic Region”, his most recent publications are on: female suicides, female civil servants in the Italian administration, and the role of women in cocaine trafficking in post-World War I in the Julian March.

In April 2016 he obtained the PhD in History at the University of Trieste, defending a thesis entitled “Italian Jews facing the Great War (1914-1919)”.

He’s the Managing Editor of the Review “Quest. Issues in Contemporary Jewish History. Journal of CDEC Foundation” (http://www.quest-cdecjournal.it/index.php).