Bruno was born in 1935 in Pizzoferrato, Italy, a small mountain village in the Abruzzo region. When the Nazis occupied Italy after Mussolini fell in 1943, German troops invaded their area. Bruno’s father had already fled to America before the war, so his mother, Emilia Sammartino, was left to protect Bruno and his siblings. When German forces moved in, they began rounding up villagers, executing resisters, and deporting others to labor camps. To survive, Bruno’s mother hid the family in the mountains, living in caves and surviving on very little food. Emilia would risk her life sneaking back into the village at night to steal or trade for food, often narrowly escaping capture by German soldiers. Bruno has said in interviews that many people from their town were killed and that he was constantly afraid during those years. He was frail, sickly, and malnourished by the end of the war — weighing barely 80 pounds when he finally reunited with his father in Pittsburgh in 1950. That experi...