Italian concentration camps include camps from the Italian colonial wars in Africa as well as camps for the civilian population from areas occupied by Italy during World War II. Memory of both camps were subjected to "historical amnesia". The repression of memory led to historical revisionism in ItalyAlessandra Kersevan 2008: (Editor) Foibe – Revisionismo di stato e amnesie della repubblica. Kappa Vu. Udine. and in 2003 the Italian media published Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's statement that Benito Mussolini only "used to send people on vacation".Survivors of war camp lament Italy's amnesia , 2003, International Herald TribuneDi Sante, Costantino (2005) Italiani senza onore: I crimini in Jugoslavia e i processi negati (1941–1951), Ombre Corte, Milano. (Archived by WebCite®)
Colonial wars
There were numerous war crimes conducted by the Italian Army in the colonies. In Cyrenaica alone between 1929 and 1933, over 40,000 people were killed and 80,000 locked up in concentration camps,L'Africa del Duce: i crimini fascisti in Africa out of a total population of just 193,000. According to the historian Ilan Pappé, the fascist regime between 1928 and 1932 killed half the Bedouin population either directly or by starvation in the fields.Ilan Pappé, The Modern Middle East. Routledge, 2005, , p. 26. According to the historian Angelo Del Boca, in 1933, of the approximately 100,000 Libyans deported from Jebel Achdar and Marmarica, more than 40,000 died in the camps.
Name of the camp Location of camp Present-day country Date of establishment Date of disestablishment Estimated number of prisoners Estimated number of deaths Nocra Nocra Eritrea 1930s 1941 1,500 Abyar Abyar Libya 1930 1933 3,123Michael R. Ebner. Geoff Simons. Ordinary Violence in Mussolini's Italy. New York, New York, USA: Cambridge University Press, 2011. P. 261. Agedabia Ajdabiya 10,000 1,500 El Agheila El Agheila 10,900 Marsa Brega Brega 21,117 Sid Ahmed el Maghrun El Magrun 13,050 4,500 Soluch Suluq 20,123 5,500 Derna Derna 145 Apollonia Apollonia 1,354 Barce Barce 538 Driana Driana 225 Nufilia Nufilia 375 Danane Mogadishu Somalia 1935 1941 6,000 3,175Donatella Strangio. The Reasons for Underdevelopment: The Case of Decolonisation in Somaliland. Springer, 2012. P. 5. Total ~44 675Sum among the estimates of the deaths in the Danane camp (source Donatella Strangio), the deaths of all the camps in Italian Libya (source Angelo Del Boca), and the deaths in the Nocra camp (source Gustavo Ottolenghi).
World War II Name of the camp Location of locality Present-day country Date of establishment Date of disestablishment Estimated number of prisoners Estimated number of deaths Bakar Bakar Croatia 31 December 1942 1 July 1943 893Bakar concentration camp, Online Research project 100–120 Bolzano South Tyrol Italy September 8, 1943 April 29 and May 3, 1945 11,000 Buq BuqBuq Buq ()EgyptLate August 1942November 6, 19423500 Campagna Salerno Italy 15 June 1940 19 September 1943 Chiesanuova Padua June 1942 Ferramonti di Tarsia Cosenza summer 1940 4 September 1943 3,800 Giado Jadu, Libya Libya January 1942 24 January 1943 3,146Maurice M. Roumani: The Jews of Libya. Sussex Academic Press 2007, , p 34. 564 Gonars Palmanova Italy March 1942 8 September 1943 7,000 453; >500 Mamula Mamula island Montenegro 30 May 1942 14 September 1943 2,322 200Monigo Treviso Italy 1 July 1942 May 1945 10,000 187–225MolatMolatCroatia 28 June 1942 8 September 1943 20,000 1,000PisticciSoutheast of Pisticci in Camporotondo Italy 1939 September 13, 1943 Capacity of 1,000 Not stated Rab, separate camps for Slovenes/Croats and Jews Rab (Arbe) island Croatia July 1942 11 September 1943 10,000; 15,000 2,000; >3,500; 4,000 Renicci di Anghiari Arezzo Italy October 1942 10,000 159 Risiera di San Sabba Trieste October 1943 April 1945 > 11,500 4,000–5,000Sidi AzazSidi AzazLibyaJuly 1942Late January 19431,0003 Visco Palmanova Italy winter 1942 Zlarin Zlarin Croatia March 1943 June 1943 2,500 26 Campo di Fossoli Carpi Italy May 1942 March 1944
References
Works cited
External links campifascisti.it, Online Research project "The Last Witnesses", 2013 Exhibition at National Museum for Contemporary History (Slovenia) documenting photos and interviews with survivors