Gianni Bernardinello started placing baskets filled with bread, pizza and sweet rolls outside of his bakery in Milan this past March, as Covid-19 battered Northern Italy’s economy and vulnerable population.
“To give a hand to those in need,” a sign above the baskets read, “help yourself and think of others too.”
Bernardinello passed away on Nov. 9 of the coronavirus at a Milanese hospital, his daughter, Samuela Bernardinello, told The New York Times. He was 76.
Prior to becoming ill, he worked at his bakery, Berni, every day despite his daughters urging him to stay home. “Between these walls there wasn’t a day in 130 years that they stopped making bread,” he would tell her, “even under the bombings in 1943.”
Samuela has taken over the bakery, and continues to fill the baskets for passers-by who are in need.
