![cover image](https://wikiwandv2-19431.kxcdn.com/_next/image?url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Italian-social-republic-and-civil-war.svg/640px-Italian-social-republic-and-civil-war.svg.png&w=640&q=50)
The Holocaust in Italy
Genocide of Jews by Nazis / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about The Holocaust in Italy?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
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 8 September 1943, during World War II.
![]() | You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Italian. (March 2022) Click [show] for important translation instructions.
|
![]() | |
Overview | |
---|---|
Period | September 1943 – May 1945 |
Territory | Italian Social Republic |
Major perpetrators | |
Units | SS-TotenkopfverbändeEinsatzgruppenFascist Italian Police |
Victims | |
Killed | 7,680 |
Pre-war population | 44,500 |
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.[1] 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.