Sultana Razonthe prestigious pediatrician and widow of Umberto Veronesi, died at the age of 94 in Milan, the city where she was born in 1932. Daughter of Turkish Sephardic Jewish parents who arrived in Italy in 1930, suffered racial laws and deportation to Ferramonti, Taglio di Po, Fossoli, and finally to Bergen-Belsenhe concentration camp where he died Ana Frank.
The death was confirmed by the Veronesi Foundation on their website, where they honored her with a biography highlighting her extraordinary contributions and tireless research on the childhood cancer.
At the age of 9, during the Second World War, she was deported to the Ferramonti di Tarsia concentration camp, in the province of Cosenza, and later to Bergen-Belsen, in Germany.
From concentration camps to pediatric wards
After retiring, Susyas her family called her, spoke in schools about her imprisonment in Turkey and in the concentration camps to bear witness to the fear, hunger and violence she suffered, until she was finally rescued from the place of death. torture after the cessation of the war.
Upon returning to Italy, he knew that he wanted to graduate in medicine and specialize in pediatrics to alleviate the suffering of children. He returned to Milan with what was left of his family, mired in poverty and with a mother who would soon fall ill with cancer.
With immense sacrifice he was able to resume his studies. «My parents protected us a lot, they made us study and we went to university thanks to the merit fee exemption,» Sultana revealed in one of her many interviews.
«During the day I worked and studied, at night I took care of my mother,» he recalled. It was at that time that she met Veronesi, a young and brilliant doctor, a volunteer assistant, who would later become her husband and with whom she would share a great passion for medicine and research into oncological treatments.
She graduated with the highest qualifications as a pediatrician and for more than 40 years, she practiced at the Fatebenefratelli and San Carlo hospitals in Milan.
She combined her scientific research and her shifts at the hospital with motherhood. Umberto, who died in 2016 at the age of 90, was the man of her life and the father of her six children.
Sultana Razon and Umberto Veronesi, married 55 years: a marriage of visionary doctors
Married for 55 years, they had a common idea of medicine as a cultural responsibility, as well as a scientific one. Their trajectories coexisted and accompanied each other in their tasks: Umberto became one of the central figures in world oncology, and she was a protagonist in the construction of Milanese hospital healthcare.
«A colleague and I went to the empty Fatebenefratelli facilities and created the pediatrics department. It was incredibly hard. In 10 years I had six children and never stopped going to the hospital«, Sultana revealed.
«I came home to breastfeed them and I often took them with me to the apartment. That allowed me to dedicate myself to my work and not abandon it despite all the adversities,» he said.
Sultana faced two oncological diagnoses firsthand. She battled two types of cancer in the 1980s: first she had breast cancer and then uterine cancer, but when they were detected in time she was able to receive treatment.
In 2013 he published his autobiography, «The Heart, If It Could Think: A Story of Love, Research and Struggles.» There she revealed that having been an oncology patient further consolidated her vision of medicine as a human space rather than a technical one.
In the following years, His voice also became a public testimony. For a long time he kept silent about his experiences in the concentration camps, to protect his children.
«I felt extremely ashamed to talk about what happened to me and all the horror I saw, especially the horror with the children,» he confessed, and defined his story as an act against the Holocaust denialism and oblivion.
She was awarded the Ambrogino d’Oro award of the city of Milan in 2019, after being defined as a «female example of tenacity and life: despite her illness, always generous and altruistic.»
His work was fundamental in the opening of pediatric wards in several Milanese institutions and he carried out tireless research on childhood diseases with the help of the Umberto Veronesi Foundation, in particular the projects dedicated to pediatric neoplasms.
«I wanted to pay tribute to Sultana Razon Veronesi because I remember her very well because of her reserved nature, but also because of her perfect memory. His life is a lesson for everyone«declared the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russaa LaPresse when leaving the Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Milan, where the wake took place.
The Veronesi family, moved by the affectionate participation of the citizens, announced that the funeral and final farewell to Sultana will be on Sunday, June 14 at 10:30 in the morning at the Jewish cemetery of Musocco.
