Vincentella Perini, known as Danielle Casanova (1909 – 1943) was a communist activist and resistance fighter. Leader of the Young Communists and founder of the Union of Young Girls of France, she died in deportation to Auschwitz.
The Union of Young Girls of France
Daughter of teachers, Vincentella was born on January 9, 1909 in Ajaccio, into a family of five children . She studied in Corsica and then in the Var before enrolling in the dental school of Paris. She moved to the capital in 1927 and joined the Federal Union of Students, a student organization close to communism of which she would become one of the leaders. There she meets Laurent Casanova, a law student and another responsible for the organization. In 1928, Vincentella joined the Young Communists and made Laurent join it. Having become the secretary of the medical school group, she begins to call herself Danielle. On December 12, 1933, by marrying Laurent Casanova, Vincentella Perini became Danielle Casanova.
After her studies, Danielle worked in Paris in a small dental practice. In February 1934, she became the only woman to be part of the leadership of the Young Communists. In 1935, she took part in the congress of the Communist Youth International in Moscow. The following year, faced with the increase in numbers, Danielle was charged by the VIIIth Congress with founding the Union of Young Girls of France (UJFF), a pacifist and anti-fascist movement. She complied and was elected secretary general of the UJFF in December of the same year; she then organized actions in favor of the Spanish Republicans.
Deportation
In September 1939, the PCF was banned and, like many activists, Danielle Casanova went into hiding. She strives to renew ties between activists and participates in political propaganda in the army. From the fall of 1940, she helped to set up Women's Committees in the occupied zone and participated in the involvement of Communist Youth in the armed struggle. On February 15, 1942, while supplying the resistance fighter Georges Politzer, hunted down by the Gestapo, she was arrested by the French police.
Danielle was imprisoned in the prison of La Santé and then in Fort Romainville. Even in detention, she continues to be an activist and manages to organize clandestine demonstrations and publications. On January 24, 1943, Danielle was deported; his train, made up of mostly resistance women, arrives at Auschwitz three days later. She serves there as a dental surgeon.
Danielle Casanova died of typhus in Auschwitz on May 9, 1943. After the Liberation, many colleges, schools, streets and high schools were named in her honor.