Lucy Salani

Lucy Salani was born as Luciano Salani in Fossano, Piedmont, in 1924.[1][2][3] She then moved to Bologna with her family,[1][4] who had Emilian origins and raised her with anti-fascist values.[5][6] However, Salani was rejected by her father and brothers because of her homosexuality,[7][8] and had to keep her relationships with men hidden in order to avoid persecution from the fascist regime.[3][5][9]

In August 1943, during World War II, Salani was called up to the Italian army, as military service had been made mandatory for all young men.[1][6][10] After a failed desertion attempt, she was sent to serve in Cormons, Friuli Venezia Giulia.[10] However, she managed to desert from the army shortly after the Armistice of Cassibile in September 1943,[1] returning to Bologna and reuniting with her parents, who had fled to Mirandola.[10] However, in fear of putting her family in danger, Salani came out of desertion, being subsequently forced to join a group of the Nazi German army in Suviana, where she was assigned to anti-aircraft warfare.[5][11] However, she successfully deserted once again; after throwing herself into icy water and contracting pneumonia as a result, she managed to run away from the hospital she had been brought to in Bologna.[1][11]

Salani spent the following months living in the city as a prostitute, having even several German officers as clients.[11] However, during a meeting with one of the aforementioned officers in a hotel, the police broke into the building and arrested her after finding out about her desertion.[12] She was subsequently locked up in the cellar of a farmhouse near Padua, from which she managed to escape from thanks to a broken lock, only to be caught again in Mirandola.[12] She was then incarcerated in Bologna and Modena, before being taken to Verona, where a criminal case was held against her.[12] Although Salani was originally sentenced to death, she persuaded German general Albert Kesselring to concede her a pardon, and was sent to a labor camp in Bernau, Germany instead.[1][5][12] She managed to escape from the camp, as well,[1] together with another prisoner, who was later killed by German officers during their escape.[13] However, after reaching the border between Austria and Italy by train, Salani was caught once more.[1][13]

As a result, Salani was deported to the Dachau concentration camp, where she was marked with the red triangle, intended for political prisoners and deserters.[1][5][14] Despite being repeatedly tortured by Nazi officers in the camp,[3][9] she survived for six months, until the camp was eventually liberated by American troops in April 1945; at the time, she was 20 years old.[1][6][7] Earlier on the day of her liberation, she survived a mass shooting by the Nazis, as she was wounded in the knee and fell among the corpses of other prisoners, before American soldiers eventually found her alive.[1][5] According to the Italian trans rights organization Trans Identity Movement, Salani was the only transgender person in the country to have survived imprisonment and torture in the Nazi concentration camps.[1]

After her liberation and the end of World War II, Salani worked as an upholsterer and lived in Rome and Turin.[1][5][6] She also traveled extensively, as part of a cabaret group,[6] and often visited Paris, frequenting the local transgender community.[1][7]

In the mid-1980s, Salani moved to London, where she underwent gender reassignment surgery.[1][4][15] However, she chose not to change her legal name,[1][6] stating that it was sacred to her, having been given to her by her parents, and asking why a woman could not be named "Luciano".[2]

Salani returned to Bologna during the 1980s, in order to take care of her parents, and eventually spent the rest of her life in the city.[1][16] She was active as an anti-fascist, and as an advocate for LGBT rights.[1]

Her story gained public attention for the first time in 2009, when writer and director Gabriella Romano wrote a biography of her, titled Il mio nome è Lucy. L'Italia del XX secolo nei ricordi di una transessuale.[1][5] In 2011, Romano also directed a documentary film centered on her, named Essere Lucy.[6][15]

In 2014, Salani was interviewed by director Gianni Amelio as part of his documentary Felice chi è diverso.[1][6][17] In January 2018, she was invited to take part in a demonstration organized by LGBT rights associations Arcigay and Arcilesbica for the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.[6][15][18] On that occasion, she said: "It is impossible to forget and forgive. Some nights, I still dream of the most horrendous things I saw, and I feel like I'm still [trapped] there, and so, I want people to know what happened in the concentration camps, so that it won't happen again."[15][18]

In January 2018, several newspapers, including Switzerland's Le Matin,[4] French magazine Têtu[7] and Italy's Corriere della Sera,[19] reported that Salani was living in poverty and rejected by many local hospices.[4][7][19] In the meantime, she received help and support from volunteers of the Trans Identity Movement.[15][19]

In November 2019, the president of Arcigay Rome, Francesco Angeli, asked Italian president Sergio Mattarella to nominate Salani as senator for life.[15]

In 2021, a new documentary film about the life of Salani, named C'è un soffio di vita soltanto and directed by Matteo Botrugno and Daniele Coluccini, was released.[1][20] The documentary, whose title was taken from the final verse of a poem written by Salani herself, described her everyday life in Bologna and her return to Dachau, where she had been invited for the 75th anniversary of the concentration camp's liberation.[2][21]

In summer 2022, she was honored by the city council of Bologna for her activism.[16]

Salani died in the night of 21–22 March 2023, aged 98.[1][3][6]