Born Juliette Saada on 16 September 1925, she was part of a Tunisian Jewish upper middle-class family in the southern region of Tunisia, which at the time was under French colonial rule.
[1][2] At the age of 17, she became active in the Tunisian Communist Party, promoting anti-fascist struggles and resisting the German occupation of Tunisia from November 1942 to May 1943.
[3] In 1962, when the Tunisian civil service began purging its senior ranks of Jewish officials, the Bessis family left Tunisia, moving first to Cameroon where Aldo joined the United Nations agency for food and agriculture (FAO).
There Juliette became a Unesco expert and was named professor of history in Yaoundé at the Ecole normale supérieure, which was part of the French university system.
[2][4] Throughout her life, Bessis researched fascist politics in the Mediterranean and documented Mussolini's ambitions to reestablish, under his rule, the ancient Roman Empire.