The partisan Bruno Segre died at 105 years old: a monument of anti-fascism. That’s who he was
He passed away at the age of 105, Bruno Segre, Italian lawyer, journalist, partisan and politician. He was born on 4 September 1918 in Turin. Former partisanleft-wing intellectual involved in many civil battles (from conscientious objection to divorce), militant activist in the name ofanti-fascism and secularism, died this morning. “Bruno Segre, lucid until the end, passed away peacefully in his sleep with his family next to him on Remembrance Day, he who was the memory of a long commitment in favor of civil rights in Turin and in Italy”, he told ‘beraking latest news, the nephew, the lawyer Ruben Segre.
Born in Torino on 4 September 1918 – his father was Dario Segre, an anti-fascist insurer, and his mother Ottavia Vincenza Avondo, a seamstress – Bruno Segre graduated in law on 15 June 1940, but due to the racial laws (being the son of a Jewish parent) he could not practice the profession of lawyer and supports himself by giving private lessons, compiling degree theses and writing articles for periodicals signing with the pseudonym “Sicor”. In 1942 he was arrested for political defeatism and was detained for a few months in the Le Nuove prison in Turin. In September 1944 he comes again arrested and taken to the Turin barracks in via Asti, headquarters of the Political Investigative Office of the National Republican Guard. Left free, Segre enlisted under the battle name “Elio” in the Justice and Freedom partisan formations in Val Grana and took part in the liberation of Caraglio, in the Cuneo area.
After the Liberation, Segre worked as reporter for “L’opinion” and other newspapers. He began practicing as a lawyer and distinguished himself in the legal battle for the recognition of conscientious objection. In 1949 Segre defended the first conscientious objector in Italy, Pietro Pinna, before the Military Tribunal of Turin, calling Umberto Calosso and Aldo Capitini to testify. Until 1972, the year in which conscientious objection was recognized by law, Segre defended numerous young objectors accused in military tribunals throughout Italy. Secretary of the Turin Association against intolerance and racism, in 1949 founds “L’Incontro”a newspaper committed to the defense of civil rights, against racism and anti-Semitism, for disarmament and peace in the world, which he directed until 2018. In those same years he joined the Unity Socialist Party, following the Union independent socialist and finally to the Italian Socialist Party.
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From 1958 to 1968 he was councilor of the Psychiatric Hospitals of Turin, Collegno, Grugliasco, then councilor of the Piedmont-Valle d’Aosta regional order of journalists and national councilor of the Italian National Press Federation. Segre has always shown a strong commitment to secular associations, following among others the National Free Thought Association “Giordano Bruno”, of which he was first vice president and then president from 1996 to 2008. He was also involved as a journalist, militant and lawyer in the battle on divorce alongside the socialist parliamentarian Loris Fortuna: conducted in the streets, in theatres, in debates in newspapers, with sometimes sensational initiatives, such as the one organized together with the Italian Divorce League during which occurred with the throwing of leaflets from the stages of the Carignano Theater in Turin during an anti-divorce rally chaired by the Christian Democrat Giuseppe Grosso. From 1975 to 1980 he was a municipal councilor of Turin for the PSI and from 1980 to 1990 he was statutory auditor of the San Paolo Banking Institute of Turin and director of various companies owned by the Institute.
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