This entry is the English version of the Gabriele Nissim entry on the Italian Wikipedia.
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Gabriele Nissim was born in 1950. He is an Italian journalist, historian and essayist who has always dealt with the cultural and political reality of Eastern Europe. In 1982 Gabriele Nissim founded L'Ottavo Giorno [The Eighth Day], an Italian magazine about the dissent in the Eastern European Countries.
Moreover he directed many documentaries for the tv networks of Canale 5 and of the Italian-speaking Switzerland on the underground opposition 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 genocides all over the world.
He published “Ebrei invisibili. I sopravvissuti dell’Europa orientale dal comunismo ad oggi” [Invisible Jews. The Eeastern European Holocaust survivors from the Communist era until today] (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” [The man who stopped Hitler. The story of Dimitar Peshev who saved the Jews of a whole nation], in 2003 he published “Il tribunale del bene. La storia di Moshe Bejski, l’uomo che creò il Giardino dei Giusti” [The Tribunal of Good. The story of Moshe Bejski, the man who created the Garden of the Righteous] (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” [Stories of righteous men inside the Gulag].
His recent book is “Una bambina contro Stalin” [A little girl against Stalin], and it tells about an Italian Communist expatriated into the URSS, 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 (Sofia's Parliament) 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.