The Holocaust saw the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state of Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, during World War II.
One of the first actions that the Italian government took against Italian Jews began in 1938 with the enactment of the Racial Laws of segregation by the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. These laws stripped away many basic human rights of the Italian Jewish citizens, with Jewish children not being allowed to go to school and Jews forbidden from marrying outside their cultural heritage. Before the Italian surrender in 1943, however, Italy and the Italian occupation zones in Greece, France and Yugoslavia had comparatively 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. Of the population of 38,994 Italian Jews, 7,172 were arrested and became victims of the Holocaust. By the war's end, 31,822 Jews remained in the country, having managed to evade deportation while remaining in Italy.Liliana Picciotto Salvarsi, Gli ebrei d’Italia sfuggiti alla Shoah 1943-1945, Einaudi 2017, pp. 3, 488, 490. 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 8 September 1943 At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jews were a well-integrated minority in Italy.Riccardo Calimani, Storia degli ebrei italiani (Milano: Mondadori, 2013). They had lived in the country for over two thousand years. After Benito Mussolini seized power in October 1922 (March on Rome), 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 (aside from the repression used to enforce Fascist rule in general).Michele Sarfatti, The Jews in Mussolini's Italy: From Equality to Persecution (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006) (Series in Modern European Cultural and Intellectual History). 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 were 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.Zimmerman, Joshua D. (ed.), The Jews of Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 (Cambridge, CUP, 2005). 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 September 1939, World War II began. In June 1940, when the Wehrmacht won the Battle of France, the Fascist Italian government opened around 50 concentration camps.Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, I campi del duce. L'internamento civile nell'Italia fascista, 1940-1943 (Torino: Einaudi, 2004). 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 not treated differently than political prisoners. While living conditions and food were often basic, prisoners were not subject to violent treatment.Bettina, Elizabeth, It Happened in Italy: Untold Stories of How the People of Italy Defied the Horrors of the Holocaust (Thomas Nelson Inc, 2011) The Mussolini regime even allowed a Jewish-Italian organization (DELASEM) to operate legally in support of the Jewish internees.Sandro Antonimi, DELASEM: Storia della più grande organizzazione ebraica di soccorso durante la seconda guerra mondiale (Genova: De Ferrari, 2000).
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 Wehrmacht had occupated Yugoslavia and Greece in April 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 or extermination camps within the sphere of influence of Nazi 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 25 July 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 8 September 1943. 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 Western Allies. Wehrmacht troops began Operation Achse: they forcibly disarmed the Italian armed forces and occupied large parts of Italy. On 12 September 1943, a German commando freed Mussolini, who was in custody in the Gran Sasso massif.
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.Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution, Rescue and Survival (University of Nebraska Press, 1996).
In general, the fate and persecution of Jews in Italy between 1938 and 1943 has received only little 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 8 September 1943.
The Holocaust in Italy
The murdering of Jews in Italy began on 8 September 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 SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff was appointed as the Supreme SS and Police Leader in Italy. He was tasked with overseeing SS operations and, thereby, the 'final solution', a euphemism for the genocide of the Jews. 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.
Martin Sandberger was appointed as the head of the Gestapo in Verona and played a vital role in the arrest and deportation of the Italian Jews.
As in other German-occupied areas, and in the Reich Security Main Office itself, the persecution of the Nazis' undesirable minorities and political opponents fell under Section IV of the Security Police and SD. In turn, Section IV was subdivided into further departments, of which department IV–4b was responsible for Jewish affairs. Dannecker, then Boßhammer headed this department.
The Congress of Verona The attitude of the Italian Fascists towards Italian Jews changed drastically in November 1943, after the Fascist authorities declared them to be of "enemy nationality" during the Congress of Verona and began to participate actively in the prosecution and arrest of Jews. Initially, after the Italian surrender, the Italian police had only assisted in the round-up of Jews when requested to do so by German authorities. With the Manifest of Verona, in which Jews were declared foreigners, and in times of war enemies, this changed. Police Order No. 5 on 30 November 1943, issued by Guido Buffarini Guidi, minister of the interior of the RSI, ordered the Italian police to arrest Jews and confiscate their property. This order, however, exempted Jews over the age of 70 or of mixed marriages, which frustrated the Germans who wanted to arrest and deport all Italian Jews.
Deportation and murder The arrest and deportation of Jews in German-occupied Italy can be separated into two distinct phases. The first, under Dannecker, from September 1943 to January 1944, saw mobile s target Jews in major Italian cities. The second phase took place under Boßhammer, who had replaced Dannecker in early 1944. Boßhammer set up a centralised persecution system, using all available German and Fascist Italian police resources, to arrest and deport Italian Jews.
The arrest of Jewish Italians and Jewish refugees began shortly after the surrender. In September 1943, the Germans demanded that the Jewish community of Rome pay a ransom of 110 pounds of gold in exchange for its safety. Although the ransom was paid, the Germans planned to deport the Jews of Rome regardless. Deportations of Italian Jews began in October 1943. This took place in all major Italian cities under German control, albeit with limited success. The Italian police offered little cooperation, and ninety per cent of Rome's 10,000 Jews escaped arrest. Arrested Jews were taken to the transit camps at Borgo San Dalmazzo, Fossoli and Bolzano, and from there to Auschwitz. Of the 4,800 deported from the camps by the end of 1943 only 314 survived.Rome
Approximately half of all Jews arrested during the Holocaust in Italy were arrested in 1944 by the Italian police.