Lidia Menapace (3 April 1924 – 7 December 2020)[1] was an Italian Resistance fighter and politician who served as provincial minister of South Tyrol for Christian Democracy from 1964 to 1968,[2] and then as senator from 2006 to 2008, representing the Communist Refoundation Party.

Her father was a surveyor named Giacomo Brisca and espoused anti-fascist, republican, and Mazzinian politics.

[4][5] While in primary school during the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, her teachers taught the children to honor and love the regime.

In 1943, her father was sent to a concentration camp because he would not obey the authority of the Republic of Salò, a recently created Nazi puppet state in northern Italy.

[4] During the time she was a literature student at the Catholic University of Milan, Menapace delivered messages to anti-fascist soldiers.