Risiera di San Sabba

Risiera di San Sabba (Slovene: Rižarna) is a five-storey brick-built compound located in Trieste, northern Italy, that functioned during World War II as a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners, and a transit camp for Jews, most of whom were then deported to Auschwitz.^[1]

Risiera di San Sabba
Concentration camp
Internal courtyard of the Risiera di San Sabba. The remains of the crematorium can be seen on the wall.
Location of Risiera di San Sabba within Italy
Coordinates	45°37′15″N 13°47′21″E
Location	Trieste, Italian Social Republic
Operated by	SS
Inmates	Italian Political prisoners, Italian Jews, Yugoslavian Resistance fighters and Yugoslavian civilians (primarily Slovenes and Croats)
Killed	3,000–5,000
Notable inmates	Boris Pahor

The cremation facilities, the only ones built inside a concentration camp in Italy, were installed by Erwin Lambert, and were destroyed before the camp was liberated. Today, the former concentration camp operates as a civic museum.^[2]

Background

The building was erected in 1913 and first used as a rice-husking facility (hence the name Risiera). During World War II, German occupation forces in Trieste used the building to transport, detain and murder prisoners. Many occupants of Risiera di San Sabba were transported to the German Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Occupied Poland.^[3] Historians^[who?] estimate that over 3,000 people were killed at the Risiera camp and thousands more imprisoned and transported elsewhere. The majority of prisoners came from Friuli, the Julian March and the Province of Ljubljana.^{[citation needed]}

Boris Pahor was also held at the camp before being transported to the concentration camps of Dachau and Natzweiler-Struthof.^{[citation needed]}

After the war, the camp served as a refugee camp and transit point for the mass exodus of soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army and their families who were loyal to King Peter II and the 1950s for many people, especially ethnic Italians fleeing former Italian territory in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.^[4][5][6]

See also

• Bullenhuser Damm
• Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral