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Mussolini's Italian
concentration camp for Slovene, Communist,
and Jewish prisoners
by James Mayfield (Chairman, European Heritage Library)
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this Article • About
the Author • Bibliography/Sources
This article is a rare inside
look into Italy's sole death camp during World War II that
was used to intern social elements deemed threatening or undesirable
by the Germans and Italians from 1944 until the fall of Italy
and the Third Reich in 1945. It offers historical background
and a visual walkthrough from my research trip to this virtually
unknown location where over 3,000 were disposed in crematoria.
Historical background:
the fall of Italy and the re-establishment of Mussolini's
Fascist state
By January of 1941, Mussolini's
Italian Empire included Ethiopia, Eritrea, central Somalia,
Libya, Albania, Slovenia, western Greece, southeast France,
and the Dalmatian coastline of Croatia. The Italians had achieved
their greatest extent since the Roman era. But by 1943, Italy
had fallen into economic decline, military failures, and had
lost many of its military positions in North Africa and all
of East Africa almost completely. In 1943, the Americans and
British invaded Fascist Italy under Operation Husky, destroying
most of the Italian military in less than a year. By September,
Italy was completely in shambles. In a desperate attempt to
spare the Italians from unnecessary prolonged suffering in
the war and to avoid post-war repercussions, Italian king
Vittorio Emmanuel III had reversed his longstanding support
of the Fascist state (he had selected Mussolini for head of
government himself in 1922) and had Benito Mussolini arrested
before declaring a national surrender to the Allies. Refusing
to allow Mussolini's overthrow, the loss of a significant
ally in the war, and the creation of an open gate for further
invasion into Germany, Adolf Hitler initiated Operation Panzerfaust.
Near-mythic commando Otto Skorzeny infiltrated the prison
of Mussolini's internment and successfully kidnapped him into
northern Italy. Hungary experienced a similar fate when its
hesitant Fascist dictator Miklos Horthy was forcibly replaced
by Hungarian Nazis.
Italy was now split into
two factions. As the
German and Croatian Fascist
armies still controlled northern Italy, the Third Reich
gravitated Benito Mussolini to the government of a new puppet
state in the far north called the Italian Social Republic
(or "Salo Republic" after the city of its foundation).
Slovenia and Albania, both previously Italian holdings, were
incorporated into the Reich, and Kosovo
was merged for the first time with Albania. As most of
the Italian army was either destroyed or had forfeited in
accordance with the surrender of King Emmanuel III, most of
the defense and administration of the Salo Republic was the
responsibility of the Germans, Italians, and minority volunteers.
With the Holocaust now fully in operation and the more radical
Germans now under indirect control of half of Italy, the previous
Italian Antisemitic laws were bolstered dramatically. The
majority of Italy's northern Jews lived in the port city of
Trieste to the far northeast. Immediately,
the Italian Salo Republic under Mussolini, and with great
German and Croatian pressure, began full-scale deportation
of the country's ethnic, social, and political "undesirables."
Trieste was officially part of the German dominion, but ostensibly
in joint administration with the Italians. Most of these were
shipped for compulsory labor and imprisonment to the General
Government in German-occupied Poland in concentration
camps like Auschwitz and Birkenau.
Others, especially Slovenes and Communists, were sent to Croatia,
where the Fascist regime of Ante Pavelic inflicted some of
the war's most brutal genocides. Within the Salo Republic,
the Italians, with German pressure and minority volunteers,
built Italy's first and only death camp, Risiera di
San Sabba. The
Italian Social Republic fell with the Third Reich in 1945.
Mussolini was executed by anarchists in 1945 only months before
the war's end and Hitler's defeat by the Soviet Union.
Benito Mussolini has a debated legacy.
He did, indeed, bring it to its greatest unity and supremacy
since the Roman Empire. However, his social and economic policies
have been greatly criticized as a disastrous failure that
often even created famine. Obviously, he also plunged his
country into ruin through improvident military campaigning.
The flag of the Italian Social Republic (Salo Republic), a
vassal of Italians under German control
Inside Risiera di San
Sabba, Italians' death camp for Slovenes, Communists, and
Jews
Risiera di San Sabba is an
obscure, tiny, and ominous concentration camp that was previously
a rice husking factory built in 1913. It is incredibly unusual
that few have ever heard of this mysterious death camp where
thousands were killed before being incinerated in ovens. The
post-war Italians have done an excellent job in deflecting
blame for these killings on a regime of only partial German
occupation, and have done very little to commemorate, subsidize,
or acknowledge the events. This may be Italy's desire to escape
paying indemnities to their Jewish community as Germany has
been relegated to do ever since. In reality, the Italians
of the area were highly complicit. It is difficult to even
find Italy's only death camp, and those unaware of the title
"Risiera di San Sabba" would have no idea that the
very few road signs lead to a monument announcing Italy's
involvement in the Holocaust and the war. Risiera di San Sabba
is right in the middle of the industrial area of the modern
provincial capital of Trieste. The local Italian population
was certainly aware of hoards of prisoners -- and the entire
Jewish population of Trieste --being forced from their homes
and shipped to a tiny rice husking plant for either execution
or transit to Poland. The entire premise can be traversed
in only a few minutes. With more than 700 ethnic Jews and
several thousand non-Jews being deported from Trieste to this
small factory on the docks where much of the local Italian
population found employment, most locals were surely aware
that most of these disappeared prisoners were killed.
There is also an ongoing
dispute over the ethnic demographics of the death camp. As
with the Holocaust as a whole, the Jewish community has appropriately
monopolized the concencentration camps of Europe, often to
the exclusion of the many other smaller ethnic and racial
groups that were slain with equal expedition (Roma
Gypsies, Serbs, Poles, Greeks and Jews in Macedonia slaughtered
by Axis Bulgaria, and homosexuals). Risiera di San Sabba logically
has a plaque commissioned by the Jewish Community of Trieste
(shown below) that shows their involvement in the monument.
However, there does not seem to be any universal agreement
on the ethnic distribution of the victims. Slavs and Slovenes
emphasize that they were the supreme victim, not the ethnic
Jews. The official
website is in Slovene, not Hebrew or Yiddish. There do
not seem to be any reliable statistics that show how many
Jews versus Slovenes or political dissidents were killed.
Both the Slavs and the Jews greatly seem to contest Risiera
di San Sabba, and the autonomy-seeking Slovene minority of
the region around Trieste cites their suffering in the death
camp as an example of their historic role in the region. Some
3-5,000 people were killed here in total [1]. However, according
to the official website of the monument, there were only 5,000
Jews in Trieste and all but 700 fled Italy, presciently fearing
a similar fate as the Jews of Poland. As a result, it seems
that most were not ethnically or religiously Jewish at all,
but consisted instead of Slovenes and political dissidents.
Slovenes have thus used Risiera di San Sabba as proof of their
valiant resistance to the Nazis and their connections to the
lionized socialist revolution of Tito's
future Yugoslavia [2]. Ironically, the first director
of the death camp and a main administrator of the
Warsaw ghetto, Odilo Lotario, was an ethnic Slovene himself.
The only languages available in the museum are Italian, English,
and Slovene, not Yiddish or Hebrew, nor are any signs. The
staff is Italian. This is a strange inter-ethnic and historiographic
dispute that overshadows this obscure and unknown death camp
in Italy.
The sign showing the Jewish community's claim to this event
(CLICK TO ENLARGE)
The concentration camp is
incredibly ominous, bizarre, eerie, and quiet. After struggling
for over an hour to find this location that the Italians seem
to have kept relatively hidden, I found the tiny rice husking
plant in the major industrial area (right in public view of
the local populations to witness the disappearing Jewish and
Slavic prisoners) alongside a supermarket. The only indication
that this was a death camp where 25,000 partisans and Jews
were interrogated and 3-5,000 were executed [3] was a small
sign in Italian on the front wall. Only one employee manages
the whole property during the week. A walk through a long
and foreboding corridor opens into a massive courtyard. To
the left are only a few tightly-cramped rooms with almost
no lighting. Multiple prisoners were held in one tiny chamber
for weeks at a time with little food and sanitation. Our few
insider accounts on the Slovenes' and Jews' suffering here
come from etchings on the walls of the prison cells. Several
urns containing the ashes from the Auschwitz ovens are placed
ceremonially on the ground before the cells. Other large rooms
adjacent to the prison cells functioned as torture and interrogation
chambers. It is difficult to ascertain the function of the
other areas on the tiny, cramped premise, and the only two
remaining chambers have been devoted to showing museum and
cinematic material.
The large open courtyard
in the center is dominated by two monuments. In the far corner,
a rather simple, marginal, and symbolic monument of several
bound and rising steel shards acknowledges the death of the
inmates. The opposite corner of the small property is dominated
by a series of metal plates on the floor that connect to a
partially-destroyed wall decorated by endless bouquets of
ribbons and flowers with Italian national colors. An adjoining
sign notes that the floor plates trace the location of the
original crematoria that the concentration
camp staff destroyed to cover evidence from the Allies. The
same was done to the gas chamber in Birkenau (as seen
here). This rendition of covered evidence, however, seems
fanciful when one considers the large number of inevitable
survivors' accounts, the undeniable awareness of the local
population of thousands of disappearing non-ethnically Italian
prisoners in a small factory by the docks where so many found
employment, the fact that the ovens at Auschwitz were not
destroyed, and the fact that Heinrich Himmler openly admitted
that race-based genocide was occurring even in public speeches
at schools [4]. The fact that an oven was used for disposal
of executed prisoners is, however, historically verified by
all the survivors' accounts, documents, and research on the
property.
The methods used to execute
prisoners are mysteriously debated. No one is certain how
often gas vans, beatings, shootings, or even possibly live
cremation were employed. The official video in the museum
describes prisoners seeing their fellow inmates being taken
away, hearing gunshots or moving vehicles (for reverse-exhaust
killing by carbon monoxide), followed by the pungent smell
of incinerated hair and flesh. An oven was certainly used
for the disposal of executed prisoners, but what percentage
of the total killed inmate population is debated. The museum
also possesses a bull whip that was believed to be used to
smash prisoners in the skull for punishment or execution.
The crematory was first tested on the 4th of April, 1944 by
burning 70 corpses [3]. It is unknown how many victims were
immolated post-mordem here by the end of the war, but it may
range as high as 5,000 by some estimates [1].
Risiera di San Sabba is a
bizarre and frightening experience that, as I felt when I
saw Auschwitz and Birkenau, inevitably draws one to morose
silence. It is fascinating due to the fact that almost no
one has ever heard of it, because of the unique ethnic and
historiographic dispute between Slovenes and Jews over this
death camp, and the fact that the Italians have diverted responsibility
to the Germans and have gone to almost no expense to commemorate
their complicity as the Germans have been forced to do over
70 years later.
This tiny and very public death camp is greatly hidden. Even
after finding it, I was uncertain that this was actually a
death camp. Only this small sign confirms it, and without
knowing the name of it, one would seldom realize what happened
here (Click to enlarge)
The ominous corridor and the sole manager of the property
(Click to enlarge)
A room of uncertain function, portrayed as a torture chamber
(Click to enlarge)
The main courtyard with the marginal monument at center
(Click to enlarge)
The main tiny holding cells. Multiple prisoners stayed in
each room. The urn holds the ashes of Auschwitz ovens
(Click to enlarge)
Another view of the barracks (Click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
A bull whip used for either punishment or execution
(Click to enlarge)
The metal plates, as the sign indicates, traces where the
crematoria stood (Click to enlarge)
(Click to enlarge)
________________________________________
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR:
James Mayfield is a historian
and the Chairman of the European Heritage Library. I have
a Cum Laude BA in History with a Minor in Germanic Studies
(language and history), am presently working for my Masters
in History, and plan to immediately progress to my PhD Doctorate.
I have a special academic interest in Europe's diverse ethnic
identities, languages, and cultures, and the political struggles
of native European and immigrant minority identities. See
my staff entry for more information.
BIBLIOGRAPHY/SOURCES
USED:
-personal photos, observations,
interviews
-the official video and pamphlets
of Risiera di San Sabba
-Images that lack an EHL
watermark are not our property. If no link is provided, we
were unable to locate the original owner. If you find that
your property has been used, feel free to notify us.
[1] http://www.jewishitaly.org/detail.asp?ID=252
[2] Ballinger, Pamela. History
in exile: memory and identity at the borders of the Balkans.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Page 24.
[3] http://www.deathcamps.org/sabba/
[4] Military History's "Timewatch:
Himmler, Hitler, End of the Third Reich."
-The official
site of Risiera di San Sabba.
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