A Life Between Science and Humanity
In early 20th-century Ferrara, the name Maria Zamorani was spoken with admiration and respect. Born in 1893 into a Jewish family of Spanish origin, she was the only daughter among six brothers. Her father, Zaccaria, owned land near Bondeno; her mother, Eugenia Padoa, encouraged her studies—an uncommon path for a woman of her time.
Maria graduated with honors in Medicine in 1918, one of the few women in Italy to do so. Soon after, she became the first female member of the Academy of Sciences of Ferrara and a pediatrician at the Arcispedale Sant’Anna.
The House and the Hospital
Her home, at Via Montebello 38, was both private clinic and refuge. Yet her real home was the hospital itself, where she cared for children, war orphans, and veterans’ sons—often without payment. Medicine was her world, her vocation, her act of love. Even Fascist authorities could not ignore her skill: in the late 1930s, she received a temporary exemption from racial measures thanks to her reputation and the intervention of local party officials.
Faith in Knowledge, Not in Power
Zamorani was not religious nor politically engaged, but she embodied another kind of faith—one in reason, care, and moral duty. When the racial laws deepened, she was expelled from the Academy but continued to treat her patients in secret. In March 1944, her health failing, she sought shelter in the hospital with the help of colleagues. There, in May, she was arrested and later deported to Auschwitz, where she was murdered. Her name disappeared from registers, her documents destroyed.
But Ferrara remembers her. The house on Via Montebello still stands—a silent testimony to a woman who made her profession an act of resistance.
Le Case di Micòl is a project funded by the CERV – Remembrance 2022 call and coordinated by Ferrara La Città del Cinema. Partners include: Prague Film School, Warsaw Film School, ACT (Belgium), Blow-Up Film and TV Academy (Italy), Fondazione per il centro studi ‘Città di Orvieto’ , Fondazione Giorgio Bassani, MEIS – National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, Istituto di Storia Contemporanea di Ferrara, and Istituto di Istruzione Superiore Luigi Einaudi of Ferrara.