Rome City Council voted earlier this August to name a metro station under construction in the Italian capital after Giorgio Marincola, in honor of this Italian-Somali figure, who was a member of the Italian resistance.
Marincola was killed at the age of 21 when retreating Nazi forces opened fire on a checkpoint on May 4, 1945, two days after Germany formally surrendered in Italy at the end of World War II.
The station, which is currently under construction, would have been called Amba Aradam Ebino, in reference to the Italian campaign in Ethiopia in 1936 when fascist forces brutally unleashed chemical weapons and committed war crimes in the gruesome Battle of Amba Aradam.
"black warrior"
Activists initially placed a sign on the metro station's site saying that no station should be called "persecution", and argued that Marincola's short but remarkable life should be remembered.
Marincola, better known as the "Black Warrior", was an active member of the resistance.
In 1953, he was awarded Italy's highest military honor, the Medal d'Oro Alvalor Militaire, in recognition of his efforts and sacrifices.
Marincola was born in 1923 in Mahaday, a town on the Shabelle River north of Mogadishu, in what was then Italian Somaliland.
His mother, Ashkeiro Hassan, was Somali, while his father was an Italian army officer named Giuseppe Marincola.
At that time, few Italian colonists had recognized children born of their marriages with Somali women.
But Giuseppe Marincola bucked this trend and later brought his son and daughter Isabella to Italy to be raised by his family.
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