Attilio e Leonildo Bettilli

Concetta and Elisabetta, widows of the Bettili brothers, wrote to the Allied Commission in June 1945:

We want to call the attention of this Allied Command to the cruelty which led the fascists to act against two men who lived up to their ideals of Christian piety, and who helped your escapers without having in sight any human reward. Attilio and Leonildo Bettili were both so generous that, beginning from 8 Sept 43 onwards, they daily and nightly offered themselves in sacrifice for the good of others, moved only by their great ideal of heroism and charity. The prisoners who came to our area -either to stay or simply in transit – were welcomed in their house and generously supplied with food, lodging and clothes. And this is not all. Without taking any account of the penalties sanctioned by the nazi-fascists, they went to the far away shelters in order to bring medicines and comforts to the sick men. They had the local practitioner treat them, and it is only due to their sacrifices – and to those of their wives – if all the sick men recovered.

On the night of November 5, 1943, the Bettili family was sheltering three soldiers: William Connel, who was sleeping upstairs in the house, and two others—one of whom was the Indian soldier Linghk Hararbhajont—hidden in the adjacent barn. At eleven o’clock in the evening, the house was surrounded by about fifteen Blackshirts who began shooting to intimidate the Bettili family. One of the fascists was accidentally killed. As soon as the shooting started, Lino Bettili, the eighteen-year-old son of Leonildo, urged Connel to jump out of the window onto the roof of an adjacent outbuilding and stay there until the fascists had left. An hour later, however, Connel jumped down in an attempt to break through the encirclement. But spotted by some fascists, he was immediately captured. After his arrest, he was taken into the house and brutally beaten to make him reveal where he had been sleeping and if there were other Allied soldiers. After enduring severe mistreatment, the soldier confesses and reveals the hiding place of the other two prisoners. While the group of fascists waits for reinforcements, at five in the morning, Lino asks for permission to go to the stable to feed the cows. The young man seizes the opportunity to head to the barn, alert the two prisoners, and show them a path to break through the encirclement—something the two manage to do successfully.

At six in the morning, around two hundred Fascists and eighty Germans arrived on the scene and began a roundup operation that led them to the home of Luigi Ferrari, about a mile away. He, too, had been sheltering an Indian prisoner of war (Ink Harbajant), who was captured in the barn. Shortly afterward, Luigi—who was working in the fields—was arrested and transferred to Montorio a Palù, where the Bettili brothers and the prisoner Connel had already been taken.

Attilio, Leonildo, Luigi, and the two Allied soldiers who had found refuge in their homes were executed immediately, without any trial.

Regarding the killing of the Bettili brothers, the Zevio CLN wrote in 1945:

All the Zevio population is still growing the loss of the Bettili brothers, and the more do we who have shared with them all the dangers and sufferings. No words can be found to exalt the personalities of these martyrs.