Known as “Ventura.” Born in Venice on March 5, 1887, he joined the socialist movement at a very young age.
He met Giacinto Serrati, director of the weekly Il Secolo Nuovo, and when he was appointed director of Avanti!, he followed him to Milan. Under Nenni’s direction he became the editor of the newspaper. After the destruction by Fascists of the newspaper’s printing house in 1922, after which the newspaper was closed, Ferrazzutto accepted Angelo Rizzoli’s proposal to move to his employ, shortly after he became attorney general of his publishing house.
In 1932 With Domenico Viotto, he founded the Chimico-Galvanica in Milan, a company for the marketing of chemicals, which was an important centre of Milan’s anti-fascist struggle and a source of funding for the Socialist Party.
He was a special guard throughout his twenties, a period in which he went to Paris several times to bring financial resources to the comrades of the Committee of Anti-Fascist Units that operated there, and after September 8 he participated in the Milanese partisan struggle.
He started working with the Committee of National Liberation Alta Italia, a clandestine publishing activity for the printing of false documents for the expatriation of Jews and members of the Resistance.
The MUP (Movement of Proletarian Unity), Lelio Basso, Cesare Musatti, Sandro Pertini and other militants held meetings in his home. His house in Cannero on Lake Maggiore became a refuge for Jews, who had been persecuted on the way to expatriation to Switzerland.
He was also one of the founders of the Clandestine News Collection Centre, created in Milan by the editors of Avanti!, which would be important for the actions of the Committee of National Liberation Alta Italia.
Due to a denunciation, in 1943 he was arrested in Milan by the Gestapo and transferred to the Mauthausen concentration camp and then to Hartheim Castle, where he died (presumably) on October 4, 1944.
Even during his captivity his anti-fascist commitment did not fail and he joined the International Liberation Committee of the lager with other Italians. The committee organized a revolt, then called the “Revolt of the Russians” that allowed for the escape of many prisoners, then partly recaptured.
The news of his death aroused a great outcry among socialists. On May 1, 1945, Avanti! came out with Ferrazzutto’s photo on its front page.
