Irma Bandiera

On the occasion of the 72nd anniversary of the Liberation, Bologna paid tribute to Bandiera in the neighborhood where she was born and where she was later killed. The association CHEAP Street Poster Art and the duo of street artists of Orticanoodles (pseudonym of duo of Italian artists composed of Wally (born in Carrara) and Alita (born in Milan), chose for this the facade of the Bombicci, the school that claims a "democratic and anti-fascist vocation" purpose, and also to express how Bandiera was a national heroine and also daughter of the same district. A large mural was created using the pouncing technique, reproducing her smiling face as she was immortalized in one of her most famous photographs.

Bandiera began to help demobilised Italian soldiers after the armistice and took an interest in politics, joining the Communist Party. In the village of Funo, where she would visit relatives, she met a medical student, Dino Cipollani from Argelato, the partisan "Marco". Irma joined the Resistance, at the time very active in the Bolognese plain, with the name of battle "Mimma" in the VII GAP brigade, Gianni Garibaldi of Bologna. On 5 August 1944 the partisans killed a German officer and a commander of the SS, which triggered a reprisal the next day in Funo. Three partisans were arrested and imprisoned.

On 7 August 1944, Bandiera was carrying weapons to her group's base in Castel Maggiore. In the evening she was arrested at her uncle's house, along with two other partisans. They were locked up in the schools of San Giorgio, but she was separated from her companions. She was then transferred to Bologna, where her captors hoped to obtain further information about the Resistance from her.

The Bolognese federation of the Italian Communist Party on 4 September 1944 circulated a clandestine paper in which they recalled the patriotic sense of Bandiera's sacrifice, calling on people to intensify the partisan struggle for liberation from Nazism and fascism.

In her honor, in the summer of 1944, a group of partisans operating in Bologna took the name of the First Garibaldi Brigade "Irma Bandiera". A SAP brigade (Patriotic Action Team) operating in the northern suburbs of Bologna was also named after her, as well as a Women's Defense Group.

Following the armistice, Bandiera's boyfriend, a soldier, was taken prisoner by the Germans in Crete after September 8, 1943, and was lost at sea after the ship he was on was bombed and sunk off the port of Piraeus.

Irma Bandiera (1915–1944) was a member of the seventh Gruppo di azione patriottica. In 1944 she was captured, blinded, and killed. Enrico Berlinguer, of the Italian Communist Party, held her in high esteem. A street in her native Bologna is named for her and the song Mimma e Balella relates to her.

Bandiera was born in 1915 in a well-off Bolognese family; her father Angelo was in construction, and became anti-fascist during the dictatorship; her mother was Argentina Manferrati, and she had a sister, Nastia.