Introduction

The Regina Coeli prison, a former Carmelite convent that became a place of imprisonment in 1900, was a prison of prime importance during the twenty years of Fascism. Here Pertini, Saragat, De Gasperi and Gramsci, among others, ended up. To try to understand its importance, we spoke with historian Amedeo, Osti Guerrazzi, author of numerous books on fascism and Rome. During the twenty-year fascist period, what role did the Regina Coeli prison play in repression?

OSTI GUERRAZZI ANSWER: During the twenty years of Fascism, it played quite an important role because it was Rome’s prison and the anti-fascists basically ended up there. Although it is not only the prison as we know, it is the confinement that is the regime’s most effective weapon.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What was the importance of Regina Coeli?

OSTI GUERRAZZI: The Regina Coeli prison is the centre, let’s say, of anti-fascism. Let’s keep in mind that Pertini and Saragat went there, who were then let out in the autumn of ‘43. And it’s a prison that is run on a share basis, let’s say by Italians and Germans, but it’s also full of very ambiguous people there, there are the German interpreters who are easily blackmailed. There are the Italian guards who are easily blackmailed. There is the director who in contact with the resistance… at the same time inside the prison there are a lot of infiltrators. In other words, it is something very typical of all the police forces in the world to use infiltrators even inside the prison. You put a person in the cell, an infiltrator, who pretends to be a common prisoner, a political prisoner, and starts chatting, trying to weed out, let’s say, information. And then there are a series of very seedy figures, let’s say, who are the intermediaries. That is, people who pretend to have dealings with the authorities and for whom they try to extort money from the relatives of those arrested. There are people like lawyers or fake lawyers who either pretend to have good relations with the authorities in order to extort money or are even in cahoots with the authorities to get Jews, for example, to tell them where their relatives are still outside. So there is a whole world around Regina Coeli that is very dangerous. Because no one can really be trusted. That is really, let’s say. the sum total of what Rome was at that time.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What role did Regina Coeli play after 8 September?

OSTI GUERRAZZI ANSWER: Regina Coeli has a fundamental role and there are obviously the arms for the municipalities and then there is the third arm which is the one run by the Germans and the sixth arm held by the police headquarters. And into these two arms go all the prisoners who are taken by both the police headquarters and the German command and the various semi-autonomous organisations like the Koch gang. In the sense that first you were arrested, taken to the questur,a taken to the Iaccarino version in Viale Romagna or Via Tasso you were tortured, you were mistreated and if you survived you were then sent to Regina Coeli from where you only left to go either to Forte Bravetta to be shot or to the concentration camps in Germany. Sometimes you were freed but because you ended up in compulsory labour or in the case of the Jews you ended up in Fossoli and then Auschwitz.

Question Bertolucci: did he also play a role in the Jewish deportations?

OSTI GUERRAZZI ANSWER: Regina Coeli, like San Vittore, regarding the Jews is the provincial concentration camp, that is, the Italian Social Republic had created provincial concentration camps following the order of 30 November 1943 to lock up all the Jews. Not only were these camps set up in Rome and Milan and the Jews from Rome were locked up in Regina Coeli, but they also arrived from the province, even from the region. For example, we know that Jews arrive from Lazio, from Umbria who are taken and brought to Regina Coeli. Because the Regina Coeli then leaves for Fossoli, I can tell you from the only list I have with certainty, that the Rome Police Headquarters sent 162 Jews from Via Tasso under the signature of Questore Pietro Caruso

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: It happened, also the first political deportation from Regina Coeli

OSTI GUERRAZZI: Of course, on 4 January ‘44, there is the first political deportation. They are the first arrested who are then taken to the concentration camps in Germany and Austria and they are the first, the very first to arrive. There are also Jews but they are taken by mistake, they are deported as politicians.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What role did denunciation play?

OSTI GUERRAZZI: Denunciation is fundamental in all cases. We have various types of denunciation, there are private individuals who denounce a neighbour who may be a partisan, may be Jewish, non-Jewish… in general it is Jews who are denounced by private citizens. Then there are the infiltrators within the clandestine organisation who are, for example, Bandiera Rossa (Red Flag) is devastated by the denunciations of an infiltrator who had entered the top echelons of the Red Flag, the Gap are dismantled, thanks to the betrayal of one of them who had been arrested, besides being a GAP he was also a common criminal, he had been arrested and he gave the names of all the Gap in Rome who were all forced to flee. Let’s say that in the case of the Jewish organisations, there are groups of collaborators, that is, people working directly with the Germans who specialise in arresting Jews. And these are the most dangerous gangs, the ones that keep dozens and dozens and dozens of Jews in Rome from let’s say the end of January 1944 onwards

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: In the daily life of those days, was it difficult to end up in prison or was it a papal risk for everyone?

OSTI GUERRAZZI ANSWER: The daily risk was very high because you could end up in Regina Coeli for a million reasons. Black Stock Exchange, it was very widespread in Rome and was practically done in broad daylight. There were squares which were notoriously black market places. But the situation was so desperate that everyone was doing the black exchange, everyone was trying to trade, they were going to the country trying to buy something, to trade something and to sell it back to the black exchange. The traders… so it was extremely easy to end up doing the black market, even for fairly simple things. Obviously anyone who had an anti-fascist newspaper or an anti-fascist leaflet or had been caught outside the house after curfew, which in some periods is imposed at five o’clock in the afternoon, in short, there were so many offences that one could do, it was so necessary to break the law and appropriate sometimes for political reasons, that it was extremely easy to end up at Regina Coeli. Regina Coeli then is not the only prison there is in Rome at this time. Let us take into account that there is the Mantellate Prison, which is for women. The strange thing, however, is that in Regina Coeli there are men and women put together, especially in the German wing. The Jews are all put together, for one thing. And then there is another prison that is San Gregorio al Celio, which is a former convent in front of the Circus Maximus that was the VIP prison. That is, it was a prison, let’s say where people who smelled of anti-fascism but belonged to the upper classes and were not considered particularly dangerous were put. Men and women went there, it was quite easy even to escape or at any rate to get in and out was not too difficult, and it was a fairly unstudied prison.

QUESTION BERTOLUCCI: What happens once the war is over?

OSTI GUERRAZZI ANSWER: What happens is that the prison is taken over by the Americans who completely renovate it, improve it, restructure it, paint it, change the furniture, try to give a minimum of organisation, even more rational organisation to everything. They improve the food a lot, this we know from Amedeo Strazzera-Perniciani’s book Humanity and Heroism in the Secret Life of Regina Coeli, and the food is much improved. It also happens that its director Donato Carretta, who came from Civitavecchia, was the director of the Civitavecchia prison that was bombed, in November he arrived in Rome, became director of the prison, collaborated with the Resistance and was later lynched during the trial of Pietro Caruso in September 1944.