Etrusco Benci

Etrusco Benci was an Italian anti-fascist typographer who fought in the Spanish Civil War and was active in the French and Belgian Resistance.

Life

Republican activist and professional typographer, in 1935 Benci clandestinely emigrated to France. In Nice, where he had found work, he joined the Communist Party and, at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, was among the first to rush to the nearby Republic, where he enlisted in the anarchist formations of the POUM. Wounded in Zaragoza and decorated for his bravery, Benci returned to France after Franco's victory. French authorities interned him at Gurs, but he managed to escape from the camp at the beginning of World War II. With the German occupation, Benci participated in the resistance movement alongside French fighters. He then moved to Belgium to continue guerrilla activities against the Germans. Captured by the Nazis along with two hundred other Belgian partisans in February 1943, Benci was executed by firing squad on 12 June 1943.

Etrusco Benci is buried in the Enclosure of the executed, a cemetery for Resistance fallen in Brussels located in the municipality of Schaerbeek. In November 2018, a Stolperstein was placed in his memory at his residence at 10 Rue de la Perle in Molenbeek.
In Grosseto, a square within the city's school district has been dedicated to him. Benci is also remembered together with Albo Bellucci and Giuseppe Scopetani with a plaster bas-relief, created by Tolomeo Faccendi, located in the atrium of the Town Hall.