Resurrecting a Life: The Bits and Bytes of Felicias Baumgarten-Campetti

This is a fool's errand, finding bits and bobs of a Great Aunt (familiarly "Aunt Fela"), about whom we know nothing... 

This is how I began this post several months ago. The family stories about her (a sister of my maternal grandmother) are scant, mainly because of a rift after a dispute between her and my grandmother about some money sent for my mother while she was in school in Geneva. So, basically, I knew she had married an Italian and that they were both very big in the Esperanto movement, and that they had not had children. In addition, she excelled in languages and had been a translator. 

So, the bits and bobs that I had been finding (and which I failed to store in the draft of this post at the time) largely were links here and there to translations she had published, often dealing with Scandinavian authors. While I will get back to that, the one real mystery that I came across was a hit in Google books from Trapped in Tuscany Liberated by the Buffalo Soliders: The True World War II Story of Tullio Bruno Bertini. According to the screenshot, on page 217 of the book is the following:

After the war, my uncle Nello was honored by the Italian government and given the title of Cavaliere. 

Israel also gave him the following proclamation:

A forest of 3,000 trees has been planted in Israel to honor the memory of Felicia Baumgarten-Campetti and to recognize the merits of the Reverend Don Mello Marcucci who has helped Jewish families in in the time of German persecution.

Well, I had to know more about that! Bertini describes what his uncle had done--he and three other priests helped shelter refugees in 1944 from both the Germans and the Fascists--but nothing about what my aunt had done. 

[1/9/2020. I had written to Yad Vashem to see if they had any knowledge of the recognition, but they have no records [CAS-238375: "thank you but I could not find any information about your relative in our database. "] I suspect that someone just bought trees through the Jewish National Fund.]


Further searching of the Internet yielded no other mention that I could find of this proclamation or of what she did.

I thought about contacting the author, but found out that he had passed away. However, I found my may to his son, on the off chance that he would have his father's papers and maybe there was something more about the proclamation. He was very kind in responding, but did not come up with anything else...

...until now, when he sent me an article from the La Gazzetta di Lucca (Italty) newspaper. The article--"Ricordare... per fare le scelte giuste': il programma di iniziative varate dal comune in occasione del Giorno della Memoria"--is from the January 20, 2017, issue of the newspaper, and is talking about plans for the coming weekend's Holocaust Memorial Day proceedings. I have no Italian, so I provide the relevant materials from Google translate (which clearly has some awkwardness--such as translating the last name "Pesi", but not one thing I thought was wrong--Italians use the same word for niece, nephew, grandson, and grandaughter!):

Among the many events planned deserves special attention the one promoted to remember and pay tribute to Miriam Plotkin and Felicia Baumgarten on Saturday, January 28 at 11 am at the Cultural Center of Compitese. The two Jewish women have lived in Compitese doing an important work of civil resistance by helping the local population and the local resistance movement. Myriam Plotkin was the wife of Giorgio Nissim responsible for the safety net and Jewish support in Tuscany and main collaborator Arturo Paoli, while Felicia Baumgarten was the wife of Gaetano Campetti one of the main protagonists of the Resistance in Compitese.
...
Saturday, January 28 at 11 am - Pieve di Compito, Cultural Center of Compitese, Pieve di task, day in memory of Miriam Plotkin and Felicia Baumgarten. Historical reconstruction edited by Emmanuel Pesi, historian and head of the project The Road to the City of Capannnori memory. With the testimony of Vittorio Campetti (niece Felicia) and musical performance and testimony of Piero Nissim (son of Myriam). With the participation of the Equal Opportunities Commission of Capannori, the Comprehensive San Leonardo in Treponzio, the Fund Documentation Arturo Paoli and the Filarmonica 'Giacomo Puccini' of Colle di Compito. The two women will be entitled to two dwelling put in camelias camellias Compitese.

My contact has generously offered to reach out to people he knows in Lucca and maybe I will get more of Felicia's wartime story. [I did find that Emmanuel Pesi has written a book about the resistance--"Resistenze civili. Clero e popolazione lucchese nella seconda guerra mondiale"--which is available online, but while there he refers to Campetti, there isn't one to my aunt.]

My contact did find a Facebook page with photographs of the ceremony, and (Jan. 9, 2020), I have finally written to the town to see if they can get me copies of the testimonials.