Franco Cesana was still a child when he fell in combat to help liberate Italy from Nazi-fascism. On September 14, 1944, his young life was cut short in Picciniera di Gombola, near Modena, in the Emilia Romagna region. Six days later, he would have turned 13. In November, a monument was on the very steps where German bullets took his life, honoring the courage and sacrifice of Italy’s youngest partisan killed in the war. Just weeks before, he had joined the Scarabelli Brigade of the Second Modena Mountain Division.
\nExpelled from school following as Italy\u2019s racist laws came into force, young Cesana kept his Jewish identity a secret from his comrades as a precaution to avoid further worrying his mother. This detail was shared in a message from Ziva Fischer, Cesana\u2019s cousin, to the local committee of ANPI (National\u00a0Association\u00a0of\u00a0Italian Partisans). Fischer, who shared \u201cboth difficult and carefree moments\u201d with Franco when he stayed at the Jewish orphanage Il Pitigliani in Rome, recounted her cousin\u2019s brief but intense life: his constant relocations from Bologna to Rome and Turin; the time he spent in hiding in the countryside, sleeping in farmers\u2019 barns; and his partisan fight alongside his brother. Then, finally, that fatal burst of gunfire during a patrol. Franco\u2019s memory, she wrote, remains \u201cvivid to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"