Daniela Ortiz
Matryoshka that tells the story of organization and resistance of the communist activist Olga Benario and anti-fascist platforms that managed to free her daughter Anita Prestes.
Olga Benario, a Jewish woman and communist activist born in Germany in 1908, was a member of the German Communist Party from a very young age and was part of the group that freed its president Otto Braun from prison. Benario was later sent to the Soviet Union to receive military training and from there she left with Luis Carlos Prestes to promote a communist insurrection in Brazil. The Getulio Vargas dictatorship imposed a strong persecution against communist and socialist militants who were members of the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL) that ended with the arrest of several of its members, including Olga Benario, who at that time was pregnant with her partner Luis Carlos Prestes.
Benario was deported to Germany by the Vargas dictatorship, who handed her over to the Nazi authorities who were in power and decided to imprison her in the Barnimstrasse women's prison in Berlin, where her daughter Anita was born. The prison authorities allowed Benario to remain with her daughter until she had milk to breastfeed her. Benario managed to do so for 14 months, giving enough time for anti-fascist organizations to build a huge international campaign for the release of Olga and her daughter. Thanks to the political organization, she was finally recovered by her paternal grandmother Leocádia Prestes and her aunt Lygia Prestes, who took her to Mexico, where she received asylum from the government of Lázaro Cárdenas.
After her daughter was handed over, Olga was sent to the Lichtenburg concentration camp in 1938, transferred to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1939 where she was forced into labour for the Siemens company, and finally to the Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942, where she was gassed by the Nazi regime along with hundreds of other political prisoners.
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