Arrigo Beccari was a priest in the small Italian town of Nonantola.
Nonantola was also the location of Villa Emma. From July 1942, the house was a place of refuge for more than 70 children and teenagers from Germany, Austria, and Yugoslavia. Jewish aid groups organized their escapes and took care of them.
After Italy was occupied by German troops in September 1943, the children were once again at great risk. Along with the doctor Guiseppe Moreali, Arrigo Beccari immediately began looking for places to hide them. Beccari housed around 30 children in seminar rooms in the abbey church and took 16-year-old Sonja Borus into his home. He also arranged forged identity documents to enable the children to travel to Switzerland. Almost all of them were rescued. In September 1944, Arrigo Beccari was arrested after a denunciation and held in a Bologna prison until April 1945.
Arrigo Beccari was honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem in 1964.