Bruno Balzarini

Bruno Balzarini – Centri Studi Fossoli

Bruno Balzarini, a 43-year-old trader with two young children, was part of the Comitato Centrale di Liberazione (Central Committee of Liberation) created by the former prisoner of war John Desmond Peck, which operated in all of northern Italy to protect escaped PoWs and guide them to Switzerland. Thanks to the fact that he frequently travelled for work, Bruno was able to help the Committee for a period of about five months.

He was eventually arrested at his home on 12 February 1944, during an enemy raid aimed at capturing Peck, who fortuitously escaped. He was initially jailed at the Varese prison, then transferred to Como, and finally to San Vittore in Milan, where he remained for two months. Afterwards, he was transferred to the Fossoli concentration camp, from where he wrote to his family, trying to reassure them:

Dear Giacomino and Agnese,
You already know I am here and I am fine. We can write only twice a month and that is why I’m not writing to my parents. Keep calm, for I am well and I hope I will be back soon. They don’t deport anyone [to Germany] from here. […]

However, Bruno was shot, along with 60 other internees, in the Ciberno shooting range (Carpi) as a reprisal on 12 July 1944.

At the end of the war, his wife, Teresa, pleaded with the Allied Commission to get back a large sum of money Bruno had with him at the moment of his arrest and which, according to some witnesses, had been left in the San Vittore’s deposit. However, she was in for a bitter surprise:

We beg to inform that, after having made inquiries in the prison of S. Vittore, nothing was found in the envelope belonging to the husband of the s.m. According to trustworthy rumours, it was the habit of the Germans to oblige the prisoners who were transferred to another destination to sign a receipt for values which they did not restitute to their owner.