Giovanni Pesce

Pesce was raised in Grand Combe near Nîmes, France,[2] the son of working class immigrants from Piedmont, Italy.

[5] Pesce fought among International Brigade volunteers from several dozen other nations, saw a lot of action, and successfully used both machine guns and light anti-tank small arms.

As a member of the GAP (Gruppi di Azione Patriottica), Pesce lived clandestinely, and planned and participated in many successful partisan guerilla actions (including sabotage and assassinations against Italian fascists, German military personnel, and their collaborators) throughout World War II years.

The Germans and fascists discovered Pesce's significance and codename, but although they used their anti-partisan personnel to try to find and capture him, they never succeeded.

In March, 1945, Pesce planned and single-handedly carried out the assassination of Colonel Cesarini, an Italian fascist who had overseen a massive wave of arrests and deportations to German concentration camps of Italian factory workers (anti-fascist sentiment had been running high in the factory).