Soon after Mussolini was overthrown, the Nazis invaded Italy, and Italian Jews had to go into hiding or be sent to the concentration camps.
The Cesana family hid in the Apennine Mountains, next to Modena.
Franco, who was twelve at the time, joined one of the Justice and Liberty partisan group with his brother Lelio.
Not much later, on 14 September 1944, he was shot by Germans on a scouting mission in the mountains, next to Gombola, and his body was returned to his mother on his thirteenth birthday.
He received the Bronze Medal of Military Valor in memory.