More Stolpersteine in Milan
It has been a while since, I went in search of Stolpersteine in Milan. Just as a reminder the Stolpersteine - or Stumbling Stones are small metal plaques placed outside the last residence of people who were deported to German Camps during World War Two, regardless of religion, ethnicity or pollical beliefs. They are the concept of German Artist Gunther Demnig. since the first stone was placed in 1992, there are now over 70,000 throughout Europe. There are other two hundred in Milan. Every year around twenty more are added and those that I have not seen are in less accessible area of the city. For previous tours, see A Walk around the Stolpersteine of Milan, A Walking tour of the Stolpersteine from Cadorna to Sant' Ambrogio, and the Stolpersteine of Niguarda. This year on 23 January 2025. another fourteen were added, with more scheduled for March. This tour includes several new ones from 2025, those from 2024 and one or two which I had not caught up with previously. They represent a cross section of those unfortunate people who were deported from Milan to German or Austrian Concentration Camps following the Armistice of 8 September 1943, the German occupation of Milan and the Italian Social Republic(RSI). They include Italian Jewish families, Jewish refugees from Germany, anti-fascist political activists, partisans and an officer of the Italian Royal Army who refused to serve with the Germans or the RSI. This approximately two or three hour walk, depending on diversions , starting at Piola metro station ( on the green line from central Station) and finished at the Porta Romana ( metro station ). At times it crosses one of the previous tours which also stated at Piola, so you could divert to some of those. Most of it is outside the main tourist centre of Milan: however, it gives a good idea of different residential arra of Milan and how they would have looked in the period 1943 to 1945.
From Piola Metro, you walk towards the large roundabout, which is the Piazzale Gabrio Piola. ( Piola was a celebrated 18th century Milanese physician and mathematician).From via Pacini take the pedestrian crossings across Viale Lombardia and Viale Gran Sasso, passing by Esselunga, until you get to the third exit from roundabout which is via Donatello. At via Donatello 26/A was the home of the Levi family.
via Donatello 26/A the last home of the Levi family before they were murdered n Auschwitz
Aldo Levi, son of Samuele and Benvenuta Levi, was born in Turin in 1898. He fought for Italy during the First World War and was awarded the Cross of Merit. Aldo graduated in engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin and moved to Milan where he worked at the Bourrelly and Zerhag, electrical engineering company, which specialised in street lighting and electrical installations. With this background in 1935 he became head of electrical services for the Municipality of Milan. In 1919 he married Elena Viterbo, daughter of Gustavo and Amalia Levi. In 1931 a son Italo was born and in 1938 a daughter, Emilia. Following the racial laws of 1938, Italo was expelled from the Leonardo elementary school, a few hundred meters from their home. A few months later Aldo was fired from the Municipality of Milan and expelled from the Order of Engineers. He managed to obtain discrimination but for two years he remained unemployed and daily life became increasingly difficult. In 1941 he was hired by the Cetti company, active in the construction sector, but was fired after the German occupatyion of Milan in September 1943. His wife and children evacuated to Lodi for a time, but the situation became increasingly dangerous and the family decided to try to flee to Switzerland. They were arrested in Como on 4 December 1943, stripped of all their possessions and locked up in Como prison, except for Italo who was housed at the House of Divine Providence. After a couple of weeks all four were deported to the Fossoli camp and on February 22 they were deported to Auschwitz with Transport No. 22. Elena and the children were killed on arrival..
According to a testimony of Primo Levi, Aldo was evacuated from Auschwitz on 18 January 1945 and died on an unknown date. In the pages of his celebrated book "If this is a man" Primo Levi mentions the death of of Emilia: "Thus died Emilia, who was three years old; for the Germans saw a clear historical necessity of putting the children of the Jews to death. Emilia, daughter of the engineer Aldo Levi of Milan, who was a curious, ambitious, cheerful and intelligent child; whom , during the journey in the crowded wagon, the father and mother had managed to bathe in a zinc tub, in warm water that the degenerate German engineer had agreed to draw from the locomotive that dragged us all to death".
Going back to the junction of via Donatello and via Filipino Lippi, we can turn left and proceeding straight up via Lippi, we cross via Gran Sasso its continuation on the other side Here at via Filippino Lippi 33, we find the former apartment of Edgardo Finzi.
via Filippino Lippi 33, the former apartment of Edgardo Finzi. He died after the Soviet Army liberated Auschwitz
Edgardo was born in Milan on June 22, 1897 to Carlo Finzi and Bice Ancona. Carlo Finzi had been the founder of the Haute Couture house "Maison Finzi" based in Via Manzoni. Maison Finzi was a renowned atelier in early 20th Century Milan, making Haute Couture for the wealthy and upper class Milanese, and also for the nascent Italian film industry. Edgardo continued the business for a short time with his brothers. He served in the Italian Army in the First World War. After the occupation, he remained in Milan possibly underestimating the consequences of the racial laws and continued to live with his wife Luigia Croci and son Luciano in the apartment in Via Filippino Lippi 33. On August 26, 1944, he was taken from his home by fascist soldiers, while his son Luciano, warned by the caretaker of the building of what was happening, managed to save himself. Edgardo was transferred to San Vittore and later to the Bolzano transit camp. In Bolzano he managed to receive a couple of visits from his wife to whom he would then continue to write some letters, the last of which would only be delivered in 1958. On 24 October 1944 he was deported to Auschwitz: he passed the initial selections and was alive when the camp was liberated by the Soviet Army on “5 January 1945. However he was seriously ill and died in hospital on 23 May 1945, almost four months after the liberation of the camp. His younger brother Guglielmo, known as William, met the same fate as Edgardo: a Stumbling Stone was placed in January 2018 in Via Conca del Naviglio 7 on his behalf.
There is a coda to the story of the Finzis. In December 2024 , the Italian press and a number of fashion publications, reported that students from the IED ( Institute of Design ) in Milan, had recreated a lost Finzi design from a pattern book discovered in Milan's Braidense library. They selected one final design to be made into a gown and it was worn by the President of the Municipal Council to an an award ceremony for notable Milanese. The Project was called "filo spezzato" , literally broken threads. Eighty years after the family business was confiscated by the Fascists, and Edgardo and William Finzi were murdered in Nazi camps, the, IED, the students , the sponsors and the Muncipality of Milan restored their legacy by recreating and presenting one of their designs to the public. Probably the city can never make up for its craven failure in preventing the racial census records to fall into the hands of the Nazis. However with initiatives like this and the stolpersteine they are doing their best to preserve the memory of what happened for future generations,
Heading back from where we came, we head back across vis Gran Sasso and to the other end of via Filippino Fucini Here in an imposing mansion block at via Fucini, 5 was the Milan apartment of Margarethe Weissenstein ( also known as Grethe De Francesco )
via Fucini, 5 was the Milan apartment of Margarethe Weissenstein ( also known as Grethe De Francesco ) . She wrote the very relevant and topical " The Power of the Charlatan"
Weissenstein was born in Vienna on November 5, 1893 to Else Kuffler and Emanuel, the first of three sisters. Her father was the general manager of the United Jute Factories in Vienna and Budapest, they were a wealthy family well integrated into the society of the time. Grete studied in Munich and married Giulio De Francesco from Rovereto (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) engineer and lieutenant of the Tyrolean Kaiserjäger. Giulio lost an eye in battle during the First World War and the two met in the sanatorium where Grete was serving as a Red Cross nurse. The couple settled in Vienna in 1923. The couple then moved to Germany and Margarethe became the first woman to graduate from the "Deutsche Hochschule für Politik" with a thesis dedicated to Italian fascism. After the Nazi seizure of power, she and her husband left Germany and lived in Vienna, Prague, Paris, Basel, Zurich and Milan. Grete worked as a publicist and in 1937 published die Macht des Charlatans ( Translated and published in English in 1939 as "The Power of the Charlatan",) her most important text that was warmly received in anti-Nazi émigré circles.
Grethe appears to have moved between Germany, Austria and Italy during the wae , it seems that she had hidden in the mountains after the Nazi occupation possibly iin her husband’s home area of Rovereto ( which has since 1918 been part of Italy. In the end she was denounced by a secretary of her husband, arrested in October 1944 and deported to the internment camp of Bolzano. From there she still managed to communicate with the outside. In a long letter sent from Bolzano on December 7, 1944, she also writes: "Dear Tina will believe me very weak because I have no strength ... but I assure you that it takes more strength to try to resist. A thousand times I say to myself: no, you can't live like this, and a thousand times I answer myself: yes! You have to resist to come back and life seems beautiful to me as it never seemed to me before, impossible to leave it. It was my fault". She was deported from Bolzano with convoy no. 112 bound for Ravensbrück which left on 14 December 1944. That same day she managed to send a note to her husband: "I don't think death awaits me, only a lot of suffering". Unfortunately, she was wrong , although her exact time and place of death remain unknown.
Entering via Maiocchi, we quickly find number 26, the former home of Lea Elisa Landau.
via Maiocchi, , the former home of Lea Elisa Landau murdered in Auschwitz.
Lea was born in Odessa on March 19, 1886, the daughter of Clara and Isaac Landau. There is very little information about her. It is known that she arrived in Milan, without her family, as an assistant to a dancer of the Russian corps de ballet. When the corps returned to her homeland due to the war, she was stuck in Milan. In the census form of August 1938 that she had to fill out anyway as a Jew it appears that she lived alone in Via Maiocchi. She earned her living by providing assistance and companionship to other ladies. For a certain period during the war she evacuated to Teglio with one of these families, but when the news arrived that they were requisitioning her house she returned to Milan, worried about losing everything.The exact date of Lea's arrest is not known, but it is known that she left Fossoli with convoy no. 46 bound for Auschwitz on May 16, 1944. The objects and the house survived her as we read in a letter dated April 23, 1947: "From an inspection carried out on April 23, 1947 it appears that Mrs. Landau lee Elisa was deported to Germany and has not given any further news. There is no news on any heirs of the aforementioned. The movable property owned by the same confiscated at the time is located at the warehouses of the Monte di Credito su Pegno".
After Lea Landau, we have a fairly long walk down the Viale Abruzzi, which later becomes the Vaile Dei Mille. This route passes some of the stolpersteine noted in a previous walk, and you can make various diversions of this route to see these. I was going all this way to see a newly laid stolperstein in via Luisa San Felice.
via Luisa San Felice. Possibly not the original building , last home of the Winter family , German refugees from Worms murdered in Auschwitz
At via Luisa San Felice is a ,memorial to three members of the Winter family, Jewish refugees from Germany who had sought refuge in Italy. Emilio Winter and Meta Marie Kuh, and family had arrived in Milan at the end of 1937 as refugees from Worms. Grandmother Karoline Mayer was born in Pfeddersheim in 1869, Meta in Worms in 1902. Young Alfred Winter was born in Worms in March 1935. Following the end of the First World War, Worms had been occupied by the French The Locarno Treaty of October 1925 included the Rhineland Pact, in which the demilitarized zone in the Rhineland was accepted and guaranteed.. Pressure from the German foreign minister Gustav Stresemann coupled with Anglo-French difficulties in maintaining the occupation, and the further rescheduling of German reparations led to a partial allied military withdrawal in 1929 and a complete evacuation in June 1930. In 1932, Hitler turned up at the Alzeyer Stadium in the city and spoke to a crowd of 30,000., things were starting to look bad for the local Jewish population.. A city which had once prided its Jewish heritage, now started to stress its historical links with the Nibelung and historic German emperors. On March 7, 1936, nineteen German infantry battalions and a handful of planes entered the Rhineland., in violation of Articles 42 and 43 of the Treaty of Versailles and Articles 1 and 2 of the Treaty of Locarno.They reached the river Rhine by 11:00 a.m. and then three battalions crossed to the west bank of the Rhine. The Rhineland coup is often seen as the moment when Hitler could have been stopped with very little effort; the German forces involved in the move were small, compared to the much larger, and at the time more powerful, French military.General Heinz Guderian, a German general interviewed by French officers after the Second World War, claimed: "If you French had intervened in the Rhineland in 1936 we should have been sunk and Hitler would have fallen.
With Worms , now fully under Nazi control, its Jewish population started making plans to leave. Meta's brother, Herman, and his wife Augusta Vorgelitz already lived in Milan where they had a sausage shop in Via Pisacane, possibly the family hoped to work with him Although under Fascist rule, Italy had not yet shown any overt signs of antisemitism; however all that was change in 1938 with the passing of the racial laws. Following the enactment of the Racial Laws , foreign Jews who arrived in Italy after 1918, had six months of the enactment of the laws to leave the country. However the Winters were still in Milan at the time of Italy's entry into the war in June 1940. Emilio Winter was interned like all foreign Jews because he was considered "dangerous in war contingencies". He was probably sent to the internment camp at Urbisaglia near Macerata. This internment camp was opened on 16 June 1940, after the Italians had declared war on France and Great Britain. It was used to detain Italian political prisoners , German, Austrian , Polish Czech and stateless jews who had been seized in Italy, and later Slovene and Croatian partisan prisoners. After the armistice, the director of the Camp encouraged the prisoners flee, but they were mainly without money or documents and the Questore of Macerata assured them they had nothing to fear, so many stayed. They were later transferred to the camp at Fossoli and from there to extermination camps. Nothing is known of what happened to Emilio, apparently he wrote from Urbisaglia asking to visit his wife because she was seriously ill and unable to move from Milan. From Fossoli he presumably disappeared into the Nazi camp system. Meta and Alfred were arrested in May 1944 and deported first to Fossoli and then to Auschwitz with Transport No 56. .On June 21 a decree of confiscation was issued for everything in the Winter family's home including, as shown by the inventory, "a worn-out three-flame gas stove". Herman Kuh and Augusta Vorgelitz tried to escape, they were caught at Pinno on Lago Maggiore , just further from up from Luino and within sight of the Swiss border. Herman died in Auschwitz , while Augusta survived Ravensbruck
From via Luisa San Felice , we go into the Piazzale Fernando Martin passing straight across the park , we walk down via Gaetano Strigelli, passing the stolperstein for Aldo Valbruga mentioned in the previous article. Crossing via Umbria, we cross the road and turn right for about 200 metres, until we reach a right hand turn into viale Cirene,.
Viale Cirene home of Piero Sonnino, a textile factory owner who was murdered on a death march from Auschwitz
Piero Sonnino was born in Ancona on 12 October 1894 to Alfredo Sonnino and Margherita Coen. Graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences of the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, on the death of his father, together with his younger brothers, Bruno and Renzo, he continued the industrial/commercial activity in the textile sector with a factory in Via Bergamo in Milan under the company name "Ditta Alfredo Sonnino". The company specializes in furnishing blankets in particular with the "Sole Mio" brand and also achieves excellent results towards foreign markets. He was present at the Milan Trade Fair in 1936. With the beginning of the war and the first bombings, the plant was destroyed. The Cantoni cotton mill in Besozzo (VA) was acquired, which was then seized by the R.S.I in January 1944. On December 12, 1930, Piero married Natalina Bresner. From the marriage 4 children were born: Alfredo, Alberto, Nathan and Paola. At the end of 1943, Piero Sonnino with his pregnant wife and three children tried to flee to Switzerland; a tip-off causes their arrest in Pino Lago Maggiore (VA). His wife with their three children fortunately manages to escape and reach Switzerland, where Paola is born, whom Piero Sonnino will not be able to meet. From the prison of Varese, Piero Sonnino was transferred to Fossoli and deported to Auschwitz on April 5, 1944. In January 1945 the Auschwitz camp had to be evacuated due to the approach of Soviet troops and the prisoners were sent to the "death marches". Piero Sonnino died during the march to Buchenwald.
From viale Cirene , we keep going straight across the Giardini Piazzale Libia and past the Teatro Frano Parenti. Take the next left into via Carlo Boatta and around 200 metres down on the right side of the road, we fid the former home of the Foà family.
The last residence of schoolmaster Pio Foà and his family who were murdered in Auschwitz
Pio Foà was born in Milan on 6 June, 1894, the fifth of six children of Enrico and Giulia Rossi. In 1914 he obtained his high school diploma at Milan's Berchet High School and the following year he volunteered for the Royal Italian Army. During the war, he was taken prisoner by the Austrians and interned in the Mauthausen camp. After the Great War he graduated in Literature and Philosophy and from 1923 he was a teacher at the Berchet High School. In the same year he married Michelina Biancotti: three children were born from the marriage, Anna, Enrica and Giorgio. Not accepting to enroll in the Fascist Party (PNF)), in 1936 he was transferred to Varese and subsequently, following the racial laws of 1938, he was expelled from the schools of the Kingdom. Anna and Enrica had to leave the Berchet High School which they had started attending with excellent results. Professor Foà continued teaching at the Jewish school in Via Eupili. In February 1942 he was widowed. After 8 September, following the start of the hunt for Jews by the Nazi-fascist occupiers, he tried to organize the family's expatriation to Switzerland with his three children. Only his eldest daughter Anna managed to reach freedom, while Pio Foà, with his children Enrica and Giorgio, were stopped in Monte Olimpino near the border, on 31 October, 1943. Detained for over a month in Milan, on 6 December 1943 they were deported from Platform 21 with "Transport 12" to Auschwitz, where they were murdered immediately after arrival.
From Via Carlo Boatta, we turn right into via Serviliano Lattuada, cross viale Monte Nero and straight past a park with the remains of the Spanish Walls, we arrive at via Emilio Caldara, where at number 11,we find the former residence of Romeo Locatelli. An extension of the viale Regina Margherita, this part of the road was renamed in the 1950s, after socialist Mayor Emilio Caldara. Formerly viale Regina Margherita , 11.
Via Caldara 11, former home of Romeo Locatelli, a heroic courier for the FRAMA resistance network who died shortly before the liberation of Mauthausen Camp
Romeo Locatelli was born in Milan on March 28, 1897. He served in an Alpine Regiment in the First World War: and was captured by the Austrians and imprisoned in the fortress of Mauthausen, which at the time was being used as a prisoner of war camp. After the returned from imprisonment he was employed in Milan by the Zepada company . Zepada, based in Padua specialised in miniature and precision metal working , such as rivets, shoe fittings and so forth, it employed around 400 people. The company had been founded by Enrico Zuckerman and Arturo Diena. It was Diena's son Giorgio , who may have involved Romeo with resistance work after the Armistice. Despite being well connected with some fairly important Fascist functionaries, the Zedapa business was threatened with expropriation and Gorgio Diena in the end sought refuge in Lugano< Switzerland . In Lugano , Diena was well connected with British Intelligence circles , particularly John McCaffery, SOE’s man in Bern and Lancelot de Garston, officially the British vice consul in Lugano, but actually the representative of MI9, the British organisation which assisted escaped Prisoners of War.
Diena, began working with the anti-fascist Frama group (of Ezio Franceschini and Concetto Marchesi). Romeo Locatelli was recruited ( he took the nom de guerre Omero) and became a highly valued courier , carrying packages Milan and the Swiss border, bringing packages, containing information relating to the situation in Northern Italy, and military documents of all kinds, as well as all the indications concerning drop sites where partisan formations awaited resupply from the Allies. Romeo’s trips were facilitated by the fact that he was evacuated with his family to Brunate near Como and therefore had a legitimate reason to travel back and forth to Milan. ( See the article for further information on the FRAMA group) On the Swiss side , other couriers conveyed the documents from the border to British Intelligence and the exiled partisans in Lugano. Diena himself made several hazardous trips back across the border into Italy His last trip went terribly wrong,on 20 November 1944 Giorgio Diena and Romeo Locatelli were arrested at a partisan safe house in via Marcora, Milan. Apparently as the result of a trap set by the fascist police. Ezio Franceschini tried to broker a prisoner exchange , with Walter Rauff who commanded the German SD in Milan, the plan was to exchange the prisoners for a senior official of the Organisation Todt, held by partisans. Unfortunately Rauff was unable to deliver. After being held in San Vittore prison, on 15 January 1945 Romeo Locatelli was deported to the transit camp at Bolzano, Then on 1 February 1945 he was deported to Mauthausen. Ironically, it was the same place where he had been a prisoner of the Austrians , thirty years previously . This time he did not survive , he died at the sub camp of Gusen on 9 April 1945. A month later the Americans liberated the camp, Giorgio Diena was more fortunate, he was deported to Dachau and although in awful condition was liberated by the Americans on 29 April 1945. He returned to run Zedapa and was unfortunately killed in an automobile accident in 1960.
From via Caldara 1, we head up via privata della Braida and then turn left in via Orti. Outside the pizzeria at 16, we fund the stolperstein for Umberto Tonoli this one is fairly difficult to find, it is inside the outer courtyard just by the front gate,
via Orti 16, home of Umberto Tonoli a partisan murdered at Gusen
Umberto was born in Calvisano (Bs) on November 10, 1900 . In Calvisano Umberto worked as a blacksmith and in 1927 he moved to Milan, where some of his family members already lived. He worked as a welder at the Caproni aeronautical workshops in Taliedo, which he reached every day by bicycle. a committed antifascist with socialist ideas, he was a member of the P.S.I.U.P. and from January 1944 he participated in the clandestine activity of the 40th Matteotti brigade (a partisan brigade operating in the Porta Romana-Rogoredo-Vigentina area). Following a tip-off, he was arrested at home by the SS as soon as he returned from work on 8 June 1944. On 10 June he was taken to the San Vittore Prison, V wing, cell 32, and where he remained until his transfer to the Bolzano concentration camp on 17 August 1944. From Bolzano, through the security police of Verona, he was transferred with transport 81 of 5 September to the camp of Flossenburg . A little later, on 23 October, he was transferred to the Mauthausen where he arrived on 25 October 1944, and then to the satellite camp of Gusen II. He died at the sub camp of Gusen on 1 March, 1945.After the war, Umberto was recognized as a fallen partisan by the Qualifications Recognition Commission of the Ministry of Post-War Assistance.
From via Orti , we head back to the via Caldara and turn left , just before we reach we cross the road and back on viale Montenero on the corner, we find viale Montenero 48, the former home of Otello Salvatore Braccialarghe.
viale Montenero 48, the former home of Otello Salvatore Braccialarghe an anarchist partisan who dird at Flossenburg Camp
Otello Salvatore Braccialarghe was born in Macerata on May 27, 1880, the son of Angela Romitelli and Vito Braccialarghe, a tinsmith worker of firm anarchist faith. Otello Salvatore was formed by family ideals, his older brother Comunardo, in fact, also joined the anarchist movement and in Milan formed the section of the International Anti-Militarist Alliance, organizing, in 1904, the general strike of protest against the massacres of Buggerru and Castelluzzo. As early as 1898 Otello was reported in the Central Political Register with the title of 'anarchist'. After moving to Milan, Otello worked as a brass maker and together with Giovanni Bonacina and Arturo Ganosa started Bonacina G.&C, an artistic foundry based in Via Fogazzaro, 21. He married Erminia Piacentini (born in 1882) with whom he had two sons: Arturo, born in 1908, and Armando, born in 1909. From September 1943 until his arrest he carried out partisan activities in the 'Street Cell', raising funds to subsidize the clandestine struggle and distributing the Avanti in the factories of Brianza .Imprisoned in San Vittore on the night between 17 and 18 August 1944 he was deported to Bolzano and from here, together with his foundry partner Giovanni Bonacina, he was transferred to the Flossenbürg concentration camp with Transport 81. Registered with nr. 21458 (Bonacina, who died on 9 January 1945, is no. 21457) died on 2 October 1944.
From here we head to the junction with via Spartaco. At via Spartaco, 11, we find the stolpersteine for Giorgio Balboni.
via Spartaco, 11, the home of Giorgio Balboni one of the 44 Heroes of Untersee
Giorgio Balboni was born in Carrara on October 18, 1917 where his father Alberto was a manager of Credito Italiano. His family moved to Milan to the house in via Spartaco 11, where he remained. In June 1936 he graduated from the Berchet Classical High School. In 1940, shortly before the outbreak of war, he graduated in Law from the Royal University of Milan with a thesis on civil action in criminal proceedings, discussed with Prof. Mario Dondina. In August 1940, when he left for Salerno, for infantry officer training. On 8 September 1943, following the Armistice, he was captured and disarmed by the Germans, choosing not to accept their proposal to enlist as an officer in the Wehrmacht. He was thus deported to Germany as an Italian Military Internee, where he repeatedly refused to collaborate even with the Italian Social Republic, a choice that would have allowed him better living conditions and the return to Italy to fight against Anglo-Americans and Italian partisans. During 1944 he was at Stammlager X-B in Sandbostel, where he refused to recognize the Mussolini-Hitler Agreements of 20 July for the Civilisation of Italian Officers. At the beginning of 1945 he was taken to Oflag 83 in Wietzendorf, Lower Saxony. Here, on 10 February 1945, he was chosen, together with 212 other Italian officers, to be taken to the Dedelstorf airfield, to work forcibly on behalf of the Reich. The group organized a strike, from 17 to 24 February, refusing any further collaboration with the Nazis. On the morning of February 24, the Gestapo intervened: they gathered the strikers in the square to force them to collaborate. Faced with yet another refusal, one of every ten officers, 21 in all, werter put aside, ready for a demonstrative shooting in front of their comrades, to force them to surrender. Giorgio Balboni, together with 43 other officers, broke away from the group and proposed to replace the 21 selected. Faced with this heroic gesture, the Gestapo officers decide to commute the sentence of firing squad to detention at the AEL punishment camp in Unterlüss. This is not an act of clemency, but a choice that makes it possible to exploit them as slaves due to hard work with whips. Balboni managed to survive in an atmosphere of Dante's infernal circle, even after the subsequent transfer to the nearby KZ concentration camp in Altensothrieth, a satellite of Bergen Belsen.
On 9 April 1945 the camp was liberated by the British . On 13 April Giuseppe was in the capital of the Celle district when the city was definitively liberated. On 14 April, together with the many prisoners present in Celle, he assaulted and looted the "Truller" biscuit factory, where, driven by hunger that had lasted for months, and in particular during the Unterlüss period, they stole flour and condensed milk. The next day he died in the British field hospital,. He is buried in the Italian Cemetery of Honor in Hamburg. In 1953 he received the Silver Medal for Military Valor in memory of the Ministry of Defense of the Italian Republic for his heroic act. He is known as one of the 44 heroes of Unterlüss. ( see the article )