Eva Forest
Eva Forest , actually Genoveva Forest ( April 3, 1928 in Barcelona - May 19, 2007 in Hondarribia , Basque Country ), was a Spanish doctor, writer, publisher and internationally known resistance fighter against the Franco dictatorship .
Life
Eva Forest was born in Barcelona in 1928 as the daughter of the painter Juan Forest and a worker. She trained as a doctor. In 1955 she married Alfonso Sastre , a Spanish national theater winner, and had three children with him.
On September 17, 1974, Eva Forest was arrested for supporting the resistance struggle against the Franco regime and remained imprisoned until May 20, 1977. She was repeatedly tortured while in detention. Previously, under the pseudonym Julen Agirre, the book Operación Ogro (Eng. "Operation ogre") was published, which was based on conspiratorial interviews with the assassins against the designated Franco successor Luis Carrero Blanco and became an underground bestseller.
She became internationally known with the volume Diary and Letters from a Spanish Prison , which was published in German in 1975. Also because of the international solidarity that arose after the publication of the diary and letters ... and the campaigns for her release, she at least escaped the death penalty in 1975 in a trial in which she was accused of having been involved in an explosives attack on a Madrid police cafe .
After her release as one of the last prisoners of the Franco dictatorship in 1977, Eva Forest moved to the Basque Country , where she also worked as a publisher. In addition to her own works and the pieces and essays by her husband Alfonso Sastre , the publishing house she founded, Hiru , published works by Peter Weiss , Dario Fo , Heiner Müller and Noam Chomsky , which were not published in Spain under Franco could have been relocated. In addition, she remained active as a writer and politically engaged; a more recent story ( Alice ) by Eva Forest deals with e.g. B. Torture, which was still partially practiced in Spain after Franco. She was also committed to helping political prisoners around the world. They had strong contacts with Cuba since the early 1960s .
Eva Forest died on May 19, 2007 at the age of 79 in the Basque town of Hondarribia.
Quotes
"I think that war, oppression and torture are terrible, scourges of humanity, but what's worse is that these scourges - and especially those who wield them - are not noticed, not accused, not fought." (2005)
Works in German translation
- Diary and letters from a Spanish prison. Translated from the Spanish by Nils Thomas Lindquist . Munich, 1975
- Operation cannibals: how and why we executed Carrero Blanco; an authentic report and documents from ETA by Julen Agirre (di Eva Forest), translated by Annie Le Roux . Berlin and Munich, 1976
- Alice. A story. About repression and persecution in the Basque Country . Berlin, 1988
Web links
- Literature by and about Eva Forest in the catalog of the Ibero-American Institute of Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin
- Homepage of Eva Forest and Alfonso Sastre (Basque / Spanish)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Forest, Eva |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Forest, Genoveva (real name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Spanish doctor, writer, publisher and resistance fighter against the Franco dictatorship |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 3, 1928 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Barcelona |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 19, 2007 |
| Place of death | Hondarribia , Basque Country |