Gabriele Nissim is an Italian journalist, historian and essayist whose works discuss Eastern Europe.
Biography
In 1982, Nissim founded L'Ottavo Giorno, an Italian magazine about the dissent in the Eastern European Countries. He directed many documentaries for the TV networks of Canale 5 and of the Italian-speaking Switzerland on the undergroundopposition to Communism, on the problems of post-Communism and on the condition of the Jews in the East. He works for the papers Panorama, Il Mondo, Il Giornale and the Corriere della Sera. He is the Chairman of the Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide Committee - Gariwo which seeks for the Righteous of all genocidesall over the world. He published “Ebrei invisibili. I sopravvissuti dell’Europa orientale dal comunismo ad oggi” with Gabriele Eschenazi for Mondadori in 1995. In 1998 he published “L’uomo che fermò Hitler. La storia di Dimitar Peshev che salvò gli ebrei di una nazione intera”. In 2003 he published “Il tribunale del bene. La storia di Moshe Bejski, l’uomo che creò il Giardino dei Giusti” now in the Oscar collection which is very famous in Italy. For Bruno Mondadori, among with others, he wrote “Storie di uomini giusti nel Gulag”. His recent book is “Una bambina contro Stalin”, and it tells about an Italian Communist expatriated into the USSR, then arrested and shot without a trial, and the battle of his daughter to get his memory rehabilitated. Gabriele Nissim was awarded a number of international prizes. On 6 November 1998 the Sobranie knighted him Sir of Madera, the highest cultural honor in Bulgaria, for discovering Dimitar Peshev, the saviour of the Bulgarian Jews. In 2003 he won the critics prize "Iliaria Alpi" for the TV documentary “Il giudice dei Giusti". On 2 December 2007 he received a special mention of the Lombardy Region for his peace activity and his activity about the Righteous. During his remembrance-related activity, Gabriele Nissim has witnessed numerous international events. He was one of the creators of the museum devoted to Peshev in Kustendil in Bulgaria in 2001, he promoted the creation of the Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide Committee in Milan, he created the first park dedicated to the victims of the gulag in the Valsesia Park of Milan in 2004 and he ushered in the memorial dedicated to the 1,000 Italian victims of the Soviet totaliarianism on 29 June 2007. He has been the promoter of great international congresses about the Righteous, among which the 2000 meeting about the Righteous for the Jews and the Armenians, the 2004 Milan meeting on the moral resistance to totalitarianism and the 2007 meeting on the Righteous in Bologna.
