Luis Carlos Prestes

Olga Benario, German and Jewish, was one of the most remarkable Communist activists of the twentieth century. Blessed with a genius for organization and an unwavering devotion, the beautiful, willful daughter of a liberal Munich lawyer crisscrossed the globe educating and activating legions to combat the worldwide plagues of nazism and fascism. At the age of nineteen, she masterminded a daring prison raid to free her then-lover, the Communist intellectual Otto Braun. Together they escaped to Moscow, where they quickly rose in the ranks of the international Communist movement. At twenty-six, she was chosen to serve as bodyguard to the legendary Brazilian Communist guerrilla leader Luis Carlos Prestes, who has been brought to Moscow for training and will soon become her lover. Traveling under assumed names, they crossed Europe and North and South America to reach Brazil, where Prestes would launch a revolution against the Fascist regime. Within months, they were seized by police. After six months of tirelessly continuing her activism from within Brazilian prisons, Olga, now seven months pregnant, was classified as extremely dangerous and was deported to the Nazi Germany. She was subsequently sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp, and in February of 1942, she was sent to her death in the gas chambers at Bernburg. Reissued to coincide with a new film adaptation by the producers of "City of God," Olga is "a heartbreaking biography that] is filled with high drama" (Publishers Weekly). " Olga's] hunger for adventure, her sheer force of character, her passion and courage, called her to a strange and tragic destiny. . . . The saga of Olga Benario is aflame with the telltale glow of an author who has fallen hopelessly in love with his subject. Morais tells Benario's story so vividly, so convincingly, that we can readily understand why." -Los Angeles Times Book Review Fernando Morais is a journalist who also served as Minister of Culture for Sao Paulo province.

In march 1936, Brazil's Fascist government seized twenty-eight-year-old Olga Benario and her lover, the legendary Communist guerrilla leader Luis Carlos Prestes. After six months in prison, and heavily pregnant, Olga, a German Jew, is classified 'extremely dangerous' and exported to her native Germany. Olga, Revolutionary and Martyr tells the extraordinary tale of this heroic life. From Olga's communist activist roots in Germany as a young woman to Moscow where she flees after persecution from the German Police. It traces her astounding political acumen as she is put in charge of escorting Luis Carlos Prestes to Brazil to lead the Communist Revolution of 1935, and follows her discovery of both political and personal harmony with Prestes when on the journey the two fall in love.When the revolution fails and Olga is deported she is quickly imprisoned by the Gestapo who miraculously allow her to keep her daughter, Anita, with her until she is 14 months old,

Transnational Communism across the Americas offers an innovative approach to the study of Latin American communism. It convincingly illustrates that communist parties were both deeply rooted in their own local realities and maintained significant relationships with other communists across the region and around the world. The essays in this collection use a transnational lens to examine the relationships of the region’s communist parties with each other, their international counterparts, and non-communist groups dedicated to anti-imperialism, women’s rights, and other causes. Topics include the shifting relationship between Mexican communists and the Comintern, Black migrant workers in the Caribbean, race relations in Cuba, Latin American communists in the USSR, Luís Carlos Prestes in Brazil, the U.S. and Puerto Rican communist and Nationalist parties, peace activist networks in Latin America, communist women in Guatemala, transnational student groups, and guerrillas in El Salvador. Contributors: Marc Becker, Jacob Blanc, Tanya Harmer, Patricia Harms, Lazar Jeifets, Victor Jeifets, Adriana Petra, Margaret M. Power, Frances Peace Sullivan, Tony Wood, Kevin A. Young, and Jacob Zumoff