Vittore Bocchetta

Vittore Bocchetta (born November 15, 1918 in Sassari, Sardinia) is an Italian sculptor, painter, and academic. Bocchetta was a member of the anti-fascist Italian resistance movement during World War II.

Vittore Bocchetta was born in Sassari to a military engineer. After his childhood in Sardinia, he moved with his family first to Bologna and then to Verona. Even if belonging to a family of artists, his parents did not permit him to paint or draw because they were afraid that he might be distracted from his education. After his father's early death in 1935, he went back to Sardinia with his family. He received a degree in classical humanities in Cagliari in 1938. Then, he returned to Verona and was admitted to the University of Florence, faculty of classical humanities and history of philosophy, where he graduated in 1944. He earned a living by teaching private lessons and as a professor of classical humanities at Ginnasio Maffei (1939) and Istituto alle Stimate (1942) in Verona.

His dedication to the principles of political freedom led him to be reported to the Fascist Italian authorities in 1941. He was soon involved in underground anti-Fascist activities. On September 9, 1943, the day after the occupation of Verona by the German army, he contributed to the liberation of several hundreds of Italian soldiers from the Carlo Montanari barracks, where they were kept prisoners by the Nazis. He was jailed for the first time in November 1943 together with his group of anti-Fascist comrades. Among the rare moments of comfort there were the visits of Father Chiot, the prison chaplain.

When released in February 1944, he became a member of the local unit of the National Liberation Committee as an independent. He had just enough time to graduate in Florence in May 1944 and was again arrested by the Fascist Italian police in July 1944. After two weeks of interrogation and torture, he was handed over to the SD, the intelligence service of the SS, and tortured once more. After a brief stay in the Bolzano Transit Camp, he was deported on September 4, 1944 to the Flossenbürg concentration camp where he was registered with the number 21631. On September 30, 1944 he was destined for the subsidiary camp of Hersbruck where he was used in forced labor of digging a tunnel to a nearby mountain (Houbirg) near Happurg. Within a few months he witnessed the death of several of his comrades from Verona. He managed to survive thanks to a series of fortuitous circumstances and his relatively young age (26 years). In early April 1945, with the approach of US and UK forces, the Hersbruck camp was evacuated by the Germans and the survivors had to move towards southern Bavaria with so-called death marches. During one of the stages, near Schmidmühlen, he managed to escape together with a deported French. He dropped unconscious in front of the fence of Stalag 383, a camp for Allied prisoners of war at Hohenfels, by that time virtually left unattended by the German Nazis. He was cared for and nurtured by a group of Allied prisoners and recovered gradually. Liberated by the Americans in May 1945, after a stay in Regensburg, he finally returned to Italy in June 1945.

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