Gilberto Finzi grew up with his brother Arrigo and sister Nora in a Jewish family in Milan. After his father Giorgio’s death in 1927, his mother moved the family to Rome, where Gilberto Finzi studied medicine.
When German troops occupied Rome in the fall of 1943, the Finzi family went into hiding. They initially hid with friends, and then separated. Gilberto Finzi and his brother Arrigo then hid in the Pontifical Lombard Seminary. Later, Gilberto Finzi made contact with the engineer and resistance activist Pietro Lestini. He arranged for Gilberto and Arrigo to hide in the bricked-up attic of San Gioacchino Church. They stayed in the hiding place from January to May 1944. In the last days before the city’s liberation in June 1944, they hid in the seminary at the Salita di Sant’Onofrio al Gianicolo.
Gilberto Finzi remained in Rome, specialized in neuropsychiatry, and became a senior doctor at San Giovanni Hospital.