will be companions in life and in struggle ; a solid , affectionate , passionate couple , intellectually and politically complicit . Together , they will fight the thousand federalist battles inside and outside the MFE .
So , the key to understanding the solidity of Ursula Hirschmann ’ s pro-European commitment lies perhaps in that summer day in 1933 : in the estrangement from Germany , in not returning there and in the inevitable gradual loss of her own national identity . Here is how Ursula herself talks about it in her autobiography , with the explanatory title Noi senzapatria :
[…] I am not Italian although I have Italian children , I am not German although
Colorni and Ursula with their daughters Silvia and Renata . Ventotene , 1940 | © Fondazione Rossi-Salvemini
( pagina precedente ) Colorni e Ursula con le figlie Silvia e Renata . Ventotene , 1940 | © Fondazione Rossi-Salvemini
Germany was once my homeland . And I am not even Jewish , although it is pure chance that I was not arrested and then burned in one of the ovens of some extermination camp [...] We déracinés of Europe that we have “ changed borders more times than shoes ” - as Brecht says , this king of déracinés - we too have nothing to lose but our chains in a united Europe and therefore we are federalists .
The lack of roots , the absence of a homeland , the rejection of any form of nationalism and of any race as a dividing line between men : over the years , the national belonging theme cannot but weave together in Ursula with the most delicate reflection on what it means for her to be Jewish . In an exchange of letters with Natalia Ginzburg 6 in the first half of the 1970s , Ursula Hirschmann tackles
6 . Natalia Levi was a leading writer in twentieth century Italian literature , born in Palermo on July 14 , 1916 , from a Jewish family of Trieste origin . In 1938 she married Leone Ginzburg ( with whose surname he would later sign all his works ),
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