Lorenzo Perrone (1904—1952) was one of a group of skilled Italian bricklayers working under contract to the Boetti company, who were transferred to Auschwitz according to the camp expansion plan.
In the middle of 1944, while he worked on the building of a wall, Perrone met the Jewish-Italian prisoner Primo Levi, after Levi heard Perrone speak in the Piedmontese dialect with a colleague of his, and a friendship between the two developed. Until the December of the same year Perrone gave Levi daily additional food from his rations, saving his life; he also gave him a multicolor garment he would wear under the camp uniform to increase the protection from cold.
Perrone died of tuberculosis in 1952, and he was included in the Righteous among the Nations in 1998 by the Yad Vashem museum of Jerusalem.
The names of Levi's children were chosen as a homage to Lorenzo Perrone: his daughter was Lisa Lorenza, and his son Renzo.
But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and unblemished, and he was outside this world of denial. Thanks to Lorenzo I happened not to forget I myself was a man. —Primo Levi, If This Is a Man