Last November 89st, after a long illness, Tina Anselmi passed away at the age of XNUMX. A woman who has left an indelible mark on our country.
She was the first woman to have held the office of Minister of the Republic. Appointed in July 1976 holder of the Department of Labor and Social Security in a Government headed by Giulio Andreotti. She was elected several times parliamentary of the Christian Democrats.
Destiny chose for Tina
Tina wasn't born to be in politics. It was pushed there by a series of tragedies. Daughter of an assistant pharmacist and the owner of a tavern, she was born in Castelfranco Veneto, in the province of Treviso, on March 25, 1927. Her parents were very believers. After her, they had two other girls and a boy, who unfortunately died when he was only twelve.
The disappearance of the little brother was the first drama, followed a few years later by the death of his father. Thus only women remained in the house who had to learn to fend for themselves.
Tina attended the Magistrals in Bassano del Grappa and, after Sunday Mass, enjoyed staging Salgari's novels with her friends from the oratory, reserving the role of the "Pearl of Labuan", Sandokan's girlfriend.
The Resistance relay
One morning, the Nazi-Fascists took her out of school with her companions, forcing them to witness the hanging of thirty-one young partisans. That barbarism was for her like a call to arms: she joined the DC, which was then an underground party and became a Resistance relay. Under the name of "Gabriella", she traveled hundreds of kilometers by bicycle.
At the end of the war, everything seemed to return to normal: Anselmi had a boyfriend, she was studying literature, dreaming of becoming a teacher. But the desire to fight against injustices had not abandoned her. He organized the protest of the "filandere", the underpaid workers of the Venetian textile factories. He didn't think he was making a job out of it. Instead, destiny got in the way again: her boyfriend, a young doctor, fell ill with tuberculosis and had to be hospitalized in a sanatorium. Tina wrote to him every day. Every time she went to see him, she found him thinner, more fragile and more suffering. Only Faith allowed her to overcome her death. Of that lost love, only a photograph remained. She never fell in love with any other man and, a believer as she was, she could have entered a convent but entered politics.
Tina Anselmi: from partisan to "Mother of the Fatherland"
Tina, a lady with a "common" appearance, with her printed dresses and buttoned sweaters, remained in Parliament for twenty-four years in a row. She was a trade unionist, then Director of the young Christian Democrats and in 1968 a deputy.
The most extraordinary day of her career was July 29, 1976. Tina was at home in Rome, where she lived in the apartment of two young ladies of the Catholic Action. He was washing the dishes when Giulio Andreotti he phoned her to offer her a Ministry: "I became Minister of Labor with rubber gloves dripping on the handset", so he loved to tell the episode.
Later he was Minister of Health, helped to pass the law for "equal opportunities" and above all he was President of the Commission of Inquiry on the P2 lodge, a difficult role that led her to suffer death threats and to live under guard.
In 1992 she retired but the Italians had not forgotten her. In 92 and 2006 he made his name as a possible President of the Republic. And last July, on the 40th anniversary of her appointment as Minister, a postage stamp was dedicated to her, an honor usually reserved in life only to sovereigns or heads of state.
Anselmi was a normal woman who would have had a fairly normal life. But fate pushed her to become exceptional: first as a partisan and then as the "Mother of the Fatherland".
http://www.uonna.it/tina-anselmi-gelli-p2.htm