On Saturday, January 16, Comerio Ercole commemorated the 72nd anniversary of the arrest and deportation of some of its workers to Mauthausen concentration camp. They were part of the company's board, and had refused to collaborate with occupying German troops.

At the end of 1943, widespread rage had fuelled many clusters of agitation and protest in the largest industrial centres in Italy. Comerio Ercole employed a thousand people, who had for days refused to work in protest at the company being converted to manufacture war material. On January 10, 1944, accused of having encouraged the protests, Vittorio Arconti, Arturo Cucchetti, Ambrogio Gallazzi, Alvise Mazzon, Giacomo Biancini, Guglielmo Toia and Melchiorre Comerio, co-owner of the company with his brother Pino, were arrested. Comerio was released, while all of the others were deported to Mauthausen. Arconti, Cucchetti and Gallazzi never returned home, Mazzon died a few months after the end of the war from the hardships he had endured during internship in the concentration camp.