Bruno Barzotto

Bruno Barzotto, son of Francesco, was born on 15 July 1922 in Pasiano di Pordenone, where his father served as Municipal Secretary and was politically active.
Because of repeated assaults by some powerful fascist families, the Barzotto family was forced to leave the town, but the persecutions continued to the point that Francesco Barzotto himself was deported to Flossenbürg, where he died on 8 February 1945.
Bruno Barzotto studied Medicine at the University of Padua and, in 1944, during his final year of studies, began working as a trainee at the Civil Hospital of Pordenone. That same year he joined the Resistance under the nom de guerre “Brenne.” Just like Anto Zilli, during his internship he secretly assisted and treated many partisans, and it was precisely following the death of one of them, Antonio Zanella known as "Athos", that his clandestine activity was discovered.

A fascist came to the hospital pretending to be a partisan in distress, in order to obtain evidence to denounce and accuse him. As a result, Barzotto was arrested in the hospital by the Black Brigades and taken directly to the Casermette, where he was repeatedly tortured for at least two weeks. On 3 November 1944 he was imprisoned in the Pordenone jail (inmate no. 2329), and on 18 November he was transferred to the Udine prison, where he awaited execution by firing squad or deportation.
In Udine he managed to meet his father briefly, who had been arrested on 16 December in the Friulian town, before being loaded onto a transport bound for Flossenbürg; Bruno, instead, was put onto a cattle car bound for Dachau. Bruno Barzotto returned from the Dachau extermination camp suffering from tuberculosis, from which he died on 18 September 1947.
He managed to write down his memories of deportation, leaving a vivid testimony of those terrible months.

Francesco Barzotto

In 1947 Anto Zilli and Bruno Barzotto were awarded honorary degrees (laurea honoris causa) in Medicine and Surgery by the University of Padua and are commemorated on the plaque at the university’s headquarters (Palazzo Bo) together with other students and professors who fell in the Resistance.