Guelfo Zamboni

Guelfo Zamboni (1897–1994) was an Italian diplomat who saved hundreds of Jews during the Holocaust.

Early life

Guelfo Zamboni was born at Santa Sofia, then part of Tuscany. The last of eight sons, he belonged to a family devoted to handicrafts. His parents wanted him to become a clergyman, but they died early in his life and left him an orphan. He decided to attend school when he became older and faced the hardship of earning a living while studying. At 19 he fought as an infantryman in World War I, from 1916 to 1918, and was honored with a Bronze Medal of Military Valor and a War Merit Cross as he had been seriously wounded.

After the war he received a degree in Economics and Trade. In 1925 he took the exam that began him in his diplomatic career. He would be a coworker of Bernardo Attolico in Berlin, and learned and became fluent in German.

Rescuing the Jews of Thessaloniki

In 1942 Zamboni was appointed Consul General for Italy in Thessaloniki, a town occupied by Nazi Germany.