The Holocaust in Italy

The Holocaust in Italy was the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, the part of the Kingdom of Italy occupied by Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on September 8, 1943, during World War II.

The oppression of Italian Jews began in 1938 with the enactment of Racial Laws of segregation by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. Before the Italian surrender in 1943, however, Italy and the Italian occupation zones in Greece, France and Yugoslavia had been places of relative safety for local Jews and European Jewish refugees. This changed in September 1943, when German forces occupied the country, installed the puppet state of the Italian Social Republic and immediately began persecuting and deporting the Jews found there. Italy had a pre-war Jewish population of 40,000 but, through evacuation and refugees, this number increased during the war. Of the estimated 44,500 Jews living in Italy before September 1943, 7,680 were murdered during the Holocaust (mostly at Auschwitz), while nearly 37,000 survived. In this, the Italian police and Fascist militia played an integral role as the Germans' accessories.

While most Italian concentration camps were police and transit camps, one camp, the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste, was also an extermination camp. It is estimated that up to 5,000 political prisoners were murdered there.
More than 10,000 political prisoners and 40,000–50,000 captured Italian soldiers were interned and killed overall.

Situation prior to September 8, 1943

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews were a well-integrated minority in Italy. They had lived in the country for over two thousand years. After Benito Mussolini seized power in 1922, Jews in Fascist Italy initially suffered far less persecution, if any at all, compared to the Jews in Nazi Germany in the lead up to World War II. Some Fascist leaders, such as Achille Starace and Roberto Farinacci, were indeed antisemites, but others, such as Italo Balbo, were not, and until 1938 antisemitism was not the official policy of the party. Like the rest of Italians, Jews divided between fascists and anti-fascists. Some were sympathetic to the regime, joined the party and occupied significant offices and positions in politics and economy ( Aldo Finzi, Renzo Ravenna, Margherita Sarfatti, Ettore Ovazza, Guido Jung). Others were active in anti-fascist organizations (Carlo Rosselli, Nello Rosselli, Leone Ginzburg, Umberto Terracini).

In 1938, under the Italian Racial Laws, Italian Jews lost their civil rights, including those to property, education and employment. They were removed from government jobs, the armed forces, and public schools (both as teachers and students). To escape persecution, around 6,000 Italian Jews emigrated to other countries in 1938-39. Among them were intellectuals such as Emilio Segrè, Bruno Rossi, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Franco Modigliani, Arnaldo Momigliano, Ugo Fano, Robert Fano, and many others. Enrico Fermi also moved to the United States, as his wife was Jewish.

In June 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, the Fascist Italian government opened around 50 concentration camps. These were used predominantly to hold political prisoners but also around 2,200 Jews of foreign nationality (Italian Jews were not interned). The Jews in these camps were treated no differently than political prisoners. While living conditions and food were often basic, prisoners were not subject to violent treatment. The Fascist regime even allowed a Jewish-Italian organization (DELASEM) to operate legally in support of the Jewish internees.

Conditions for non-Jews were much worse. Italian authorities perceived that imprisoned Roma were used to a harsh life, and they received much lower food allowances and more basic accommodation. After the occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia in 1941, Italy opened concentration camps in its occupation zones there. These held a total of up to 150,000 people, mostly Slavs. Living conditions were very harsh, and the mortality rates in these camps far exceeded those of the camps in Italy.

Unlike Jews in other Axis-aligned countries, no Jews in Italy or Italian-occupied areas were murdered or deported to concentration camps in Germany before September 1943. In the territories occupied by the Italian Army in Greece, France and Yugoslavia, Jews even found protection from persecution. The Italian Army actively protected Jews in occupation zones, to the frustration of Nazi Germany, and to the point where the Italian sector in Croatia was referred to as the "Promised Land". Up to September 1943, Germany made no serious attempt to force Mussolini and Fascist Italy into handing over Italian Jews. It was nevertheless irritated with the Italian refusal to arrest and deport its Jewish population, feeling it encouraged other countries allied with the Axis powers to refuse as well.

On July 25, 1943, with the fall of the Fascist Regime and the arrest of Benito Mussolini, the situation in the Italian concentration camps changed. Inmates, including Jewish prisoners, were gradually released. However, this process was not completed by the time German authorities took over the camps in northern-central Italy on September 8, 1943. Luckily, hundreds of Jewish refugees who were imprisoned in the major camps in the South ( Campagna internment camp and Ferramonti di Tarsia) were liberated by the Allies before the arrival of the Germans, but 43,000 Jews (35,000 Italians and 8,000 refugees from other countries) were trapped in the territories now under control of the Italian Social Republic.

In general, the fate and persecution of Jews in Italy between 1938 and 1943 has received only very limited attention in the Italian media. Lists of Jews drawn up to enforce the racial laws would be used to round them up after the Italian surrender on September 8, 1943.

The Holocaust in Italy

The murdering of Jews in Italy began on September 8, 1943, after German troops seized control of Northern and Central Italy, freed Benito Mussolini from prison and installed him as the head of the puppet state of the Italian Social Republic.

Organisation

Tasked with overseeing SS operations and, thereby, the final solution, the genocide of the Jews, was SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Karl Wolff, who was appointed as the Supreme SS and Police Leader in Italy. Wolff assembled a group of SS personnel under him with vast experience in the extermination of Jews in Eastern Europe. Odilo Globocnik, appointed as Higher SS and Police Leader for the Adriatic coastal area, was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews and Gypsies in Lublin, Poland, before being sent to Italy. Karl Brunner was appointed as SS and Police Leader in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Willy Tensfeld in Monza for upper and western Italy and Karl-Heinz Bürger was placed in charge of anti-partisan operations.

The security police and the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD) came under the command of Wilhelm Harster, based in Verona. He had held the same position in the Netherlands. Theodor Dannecker, previously active in the deportation of Greek Jews in the part of Greece occupied by Bulgaria, was made chief of the ''Judenreferat'' of the SD and was tasked with the deportation of the Italian Jews. Not seen as efficient enough, he was replaced by Friedrich Boßhammer, who like Dannecker, was closely associated with Adolf Eichmann