Arrigo Finzi grew up with his brother Gilberto and sister Nora in a Jewish family in Milan. After his father Giorgio’s death in 1927, his mother moved the family to Rome. Arrigo Finzi studied mathematics there until 1938.
In the fall of 1943, Italy was occupied by German troops. The occupiers planned a raid for October 16, intending to arrest and deport all Jews living in Rome. The Finzi family learned of the upcoming raid and were able to hide with friends. Arrigo and Gilberto Finzi then hid in the Pontifical Lombard Seminary. After several other hiding places, the engineer Pietro Lestini took them to the Church of San Gioacchino, where other endangered men had bricked themselves into an attic hiding place. They received food via a high window at night. The Finzis stayed there from January to May 1944. In the last days before the city’s liberation, they hid in the seminary at the Salita di Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo.
Arrigo Finzi later emigrated to Israel and became a professor of mathematics at the Israel Institute of Technology.