Franco Cetrelli 1930 - 1945

Born 24.12.1930 in La Spezia
Died 22.4.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Franco Cetrelli was the second youngest of four siblings. Their father worked on the trams. Franco worked in Migliarina (La Spezia) as an apprentice in the photo shop of Renato Pedrini, for whom he is more than just an errand boy; he is fond of Franco, as if he were his own son.

When he opened up the shop on the morning of 19 September 1944, Franco was arrested together with his employer as part of a targeted round up of partisans and supporters of the resistance, during which the densely populated and famously anti-Fascist working class district of Migliarina was combed by the authorities. At first Franco is held in the local barracks of the 21st Infantry Regiment, which the Fascists had converted into a jail and torture house. He was then transferred to the Marassi jail in Genoa and later to the Bolzano concentration camp. Finally he was deported to Mauthausen concentration camp (prisoner number 126119), where he arrived on 4 February 1945 on transport no. 119.

In the tragic days at the end of April, the last acts of barbaric atrocity cost hundreds of concentration camp prisoners their lives as they are brutally executed; 13 are from La Spezia with Franco Cetrelli among them, who was shot on 22 April 1945.

Franco Cetrelli, labelled with a red triangle, turned 14 during his time in the camp and was therefore one of the youngest Italian political prisoners to die at Mauthausen.

Doriana Ferrato

ANED, La Spezia section

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

 

Sources:

Archive of ANED, La Spezia section, 'Directory of those deported to the Mauthausen extermination camp, recorded by the section’.

 

References:

G.U. 1968 Sup. N. 130 22-5.

Mino Micheli: I vivi e i morti [The Living and the Dead] (Milan 1967).

Valeria Morelli: I deportati italiani nei campi di sterminio 1943–1945 [Italian deportees to the extermination camps 1943–1945] (Milan 1965).

Aldo Pantozzi: Sotto gli occhi della morte. Da Bolzano a Mauthausen [Under the Eyes of Death. From Bolzano to Mauthausen] (Trento 2002).

Italo Tibaldi: Compagni di viaggio. Dall'Italia ai lager nazisti. I “trasporti” dei deportati 1943–45 [Travelling Companions. From Italy to the Nazi camps. The ‘transports’ of the deportees 1943–1945] (Milan 1995).

 

Various authors: Migliarina ricorda, testimonianze sulla resistenza e deportazione 1943–45 [Migliarina remembers, testimonies on resistance and deportation 1943–1945] (Turin 1996).

Location In room