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The Ravensbrück Memorial mourns the death of Mirella Stanzione, who died on 23 July 2026 at the age of 99.

She was 17 years old when she and her mother were arrested on 2 July 1944 because of her family's anti-fascist activities. After being held in prisons in La Spezia and Genoa and then transferred to the Bolzano transit camp, she was deported to Ravensbrück. Here she was forced to perform forced labour, among others for the Siemens company, and survived the clearing of the camp by the SS. After her liberation she was able to return to Italy with her mother.

It was only late in life that Mirella Stanzione began to speak about her imprisonment in Ravensbrück. But she then turned her experiences into public commitment. She met with school students and worked with the Associazione Nazionale Ex Deportati nei Campi Nazisti (ANED), the Italian association of those persecuted under National Socialism.

Lorenzo Tombelli, chair of ANED Florence:
"She always drew attention to what was specific about the deportation of women, so that the history of the women of Ravensbrück would not remain at the margins of collective memory. (…) She turned suffering into civic engagement."

At the same time, she felt throughout her life the injustice of having been violently torn out of her life as a young girl.

Her daughter, Ambra Laurenzi, remembers:
"My mother often said that she would not have survived that hell at the age of seventeen had it not been for her own mother. The two of them were together for the entire time of their imprisonment."

Ambra Laurenzi has taken up the legacy of her mother and grandmother and today serves as President of the International Ravensbrück Committee. In this way the work of remembrance has passed to the following generations.

Our sympathy goes to Ambra Laurenzi, to her family and to all those who were close to Mirella Stanzione.