Francesco Moisello

In July 1944, Francesco Moisello was arrested by Italian police in front of the company where he worked. He was accused of “providing support to insurgents.” He was first brought to the German transit camp in Bozen. In September 1944, he was sent to the Flossenbürg concentration camp. After three weeks in the quarantine camp, the SS transferred him along with about 600 prisoners to the Hersbruck subcamp. Living conditions at the subcamp were catastrophic, and the prisoners worked as forced laborers under brutal conditions, building an underground production facility for aircraft engines. Many of the prisoners at Hersbruck survived only a matter of weeks. Francesco Moisello died in late November 1944. To conceal the cause of death, the German occupation authorities in Italy told his family that he had died during an air raid. At the time of his death, the Hersbruck camp had not yet been equipped with incineration ovens. Instead the SS ordered that Francesco Moisello be cremated in the municipal facility at the Westfriedhof cemetery in Nuremberg. Later, the urn with his ashes was moved from the communal vault at Westfriedhof to Nuremberg’s Südfriedhof cemetery. In 1960, his urn was finally moved to the Cemetery of Honor at the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp Memorial. For many decades, his family did not know the location of his remains. Finally, after much research, Francesco Moisello’s grandsons discovered that their grandfather’s ashes were buried at Flossenbürg.