FROM
PRISON
TO THE CAMPS:
THE STORIES
FROM
PRISON
TO THE CAMPS:
THE STORIES
FROM
PRISON
TO THE CAMPS:
THE STORIES

Political deportation and Jewish deportation

During the period of World War II, a systematic and massive practice of deporting human beings to concentration facilities developed in the European territories occupied by the Axis forces. This process, orchestrated by the Third Reich, represented one of humanity’s greatest tragedies, characterized by violence, oppression and dehumanization.

The phenomenon of deportation can be understood through a clear division into two main categories: Jewish deportation and political deportation.

Jewish Deportation

The deportation of Jews began in 1938 and reached dramatic proportions beginning in 1941. This form of deportation was based on an ideological view that regarded Jews as having an “unchangeable ontological quality.” For the Nazi regime, being Jewish was not a choice or behavior, but an existential condition that made them subject to persecution and extermination. Jews were deported mainly to Vernichtungslager, extermination camps specially designed for physical elimination, such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.

More than 8,000 Jews were deported from Italy, of whom 6806 have been identified to date (3202 women; 3598 men; 6 unknown)

Political deportation

Political deportation, which began as early as 1933, focused on political opponents, dissidents, nonconformists, and, more generally, anyone perceived as a threat to the Nazi regime. In this case, deportees were persecuted for what they did or what they were supposed to do. The main camps for political deportees were the Konzentrationslager, or concentration camps such as Dachau and Mauthausen, where prisoners were subjected to forced labor, punishment, and inhumane living conditions.

There were 23,826 politicians deported from Italy (22,204 men and 1,514 women) Main Lagers where Italians were deported:

  • Dachau

  • Mauthausen

  • Buchenwald

  • Flossenbürg

  • Auschwitz

  • Ravensbrück (mostly women).

  • Dora-Mittelbau

  • Other camps: include Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen and Grossrosen.

Regional Features

  • Central-Northern Italy: Most of the deportees came from the northern regions, particularly from the Adriatisches Küstenland area (Istrian, Dalmatian, and Slovenian territories).

  • Southern Italy: Despite the rapid liberation of the South in 1943, many southern deportees were soldiers or partisans captured in the North.

Open issues and special categories

Italian deportees also included special categories, such as:
  • Geistlicher (religious): mainly Catholic priests.
  • Jude (Jews): A minority, sometimes classified as Schutz Jude (protected Jews).
  • NAL (Nicht aus dem Lager): prisoners subject to investigation by Nazi police for both common and political offenses.
Some deportees were also registered as Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog), intended to disappear without a trace as a form of intimidation against alleged opponents of the regime.

Impact of deportation

Deportation was not only about internment in camps, but also about the exploitation of prisoners’ labor power. From 1943, the Nazi regime increasingly used prisoners as slave labor to support war production, but came into conflict with its own ideology of eliminating “undesirables.” This led to extreme situations, such as the transfer of forced laborers to work in the Reich, and the terrible death marches in the last months of the conflict.

The stories

Valrigo Mariani was imprisoned in Regina Coeli and then deported to Nazi camps in the first transport of politicians from Italy. Eugenio Iafrate, his nephew, tells his story through a journey in his uncle’s footsteps in the company of journalist Francesco Bertolucci.

The Florentine Mario Piccioli was deported as soon as he was 17, after they had put his mother in prison. He would also end up in the hell of Ebensee. Granddaughter Laura Piccioli tells us her uncle’s story in a journey through the camps where he was deported

Mirella Stanzione was deported with her mother to Ravensbruck concentration camp, the Third Reich’s most dramatically notorious women’s camp. Her daughter Ambra Laurenzi retraces her dramatic journey that began in La Spezia, Italy.

Marco Moise Mustacchi, of Jewish faith, was deported from Trieste in 1944. Family members never heard from him again. His son Sabatino, who was barely a year old at the time, retraced his father’s footsteps, found him and ‘brought’ him home.

Andrea Lorenzetti, a stockbroker, until the early 1940s was not involved in politics. Then something changed and he decided it was time to do something. He was one of the organizers of the great Milan strike of 1944, the first in Nazi- and Fascist-occupied Europe. A strike that threw the Third Reich into crisis. His son Guido tells us his story