Gonars concentration camp

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Campo di Concentramento Gonars (Italy)
Campo di Concentramento Gonars
Campo di Concentramento Gonars

The Gonars concentration camp was an Italian concentration camp in the immediate vicinity of the village of Gonars at the time of the Second World War . It existed there from 1942 until the capitulation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1943. Slovenes and Croats were interned in this camp . By interning such prisoners, the fascist regime wanted to prevent young men in the Yugoslavian territories occupied by Italy, which included the southern part of Slovenia up to the capital Ljubljana, from becoming partisans of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army . This camp (postal address: Campo concentramento per internati civili - no. 89. Sc. Poste militare 3200 Gonars, Italia) was one of the larger and stricter Italian concentration camps.

history

On February 23, 1942, work began on building the concentration camp. The first transport of prisoners reached this camp two days later. The first inmates were prisoners of war, mainly Slovenes from the Ljubljana area , but from the end of 1942 also prisoners from the Italian concentration camp Kampor on the island of Rab , in the Adriatic Sea or from the camp near Monigo , a town in the Treviso municipality . The prisoners themselves first had to set up the camp or the accommodation. They were no longer treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, but as civilians who had been interned. The camp filled up quickly. On April 8, 1942, around 1,870 prisoners were interned there. In June and July 1942 alone, 2,218 people were admitted. Of these, 1368 had to camp in tents. On June 28, a train with over 600 Slovenian prisoners and around 100 guards from Ljubljana on the way to Gonars shortly after Borovnica was stopped by partisans and all prisoners were freed. In August 1942 there were around 6,000 prisoners in the camp, which was originally built for only 3,000 people. That number rose to 6,396 in September 1942. Until mid-November 1942, only male prisoners were housed in the camp. From then on, the first families and mothers with their children from the Kampor concentration camp arrived on the island of Rab . The rapid increase is presumably also due to the Italian offensive, which ran roughly at the same time (from July 16 to November 4, 1942) in the Dolenjska and Notranjska regions . In 1943 there were around 10,000 interned people in the camp. At that time, the capacity was actually only designed for 6500 prisoners. Extreme malnutrition and poor hygienic conditions resulted in high mortality among prisoners. Child mortality was particularly high. A total of 134 children died in the camp. In February 1943 there were 1472 children up to the age of 15 in the camp and 1916 women in the “Beta” and “Gamma” sections.

The camp was abandoned on September 8, 1943, after Italy surrendered. In order to cover up the existence of the camp, the barracks were later demolished and a kindergarten was built from the building materials. The warehouse area was converted into a meadow. In total, over 500 internees died in this camp. Charcoal drawings of camp life have been preserved. Among others by Drago Vidmar, Nande Vidmar and Stane Kumar.

Prisoner Numbers
March 1942 May 1942 August 1942 September 1942 December 1942 February 1943 April 1943 June 1943 July 1943
Prisoners 878 2,350 6,074 6,396 5,687 2,676 4,503 4,253 4,459

Warehouse structure

The camp was run by the camp commandant, who commanded 26 officers and 600 guards. In September 1942 the evacuation of the "Beta" camp began and was completed by October of the same year. The male prisoners of war in this part of the camp were distributed to other Italian concentration camps such as the Renicci camps in Tuscany and Monigo near Treviso or Chiesanuova near Padua and camp 122 on the island of Rab . The "Beta" camp was filled with families and mothers with children from November 1942. The remaining 700 male prisoners lived in the smaller part of the camp, the so-called men's camp.

Those interned in the camp were of different ages and origins, of different social ranks and professions: intellectuals, workers, master craftsmen, farmers, day laborers and others. Industrial workers were least represented.

Camp commanders

In chronologically ascending order:

1. Lieutenant Colonel Eugenio Ricedomini
2. Cesare Marioni
3. Ignazio Fragapane
4. Gustavo de Domincis
5. Arturo Macchi (until after the surrender of Italy on September 8, 1943)

monument

In 1973 the sculptor Miodrag Živković erected a memorial in the municipal cemetery at the behest of Yugoslavia . The remains of 453 Slovenian and Croatian victims were transferred to the ossuary there . The location of the concentration camp is indicated on information boards in the city and at the cemetery. Further information boards were set up at the location of the former camp section B (eta) and in the vicinity.

Even more than 60 years after the end of the war, there is hardly any awareness among the Italian population that there was such a thing as concentration camps in Italy. In Gonars itself one encounters people who vehemently deny that the Gonars camp was a concentration camp. Instead, they emphasize that it was just a detention center.

In 2003, the then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi claimed that there had been no concentration camps during the time of Italian fascism , that Mussolini had not killed anyone and that he had sent 'people into internal exile on vacation'.

  • Part of the Slovenian monument

  • Joint Slovenian-Croatian monument

  • Names of victims on the Slovenian part of the monument

swell

  1. ^ Amedeo Osti Guerrazzi: The Italian Army in Slovenia . Palgrave 2013, ISBN 978-1-349-44807-4 , p. 70.
  2. ↑ Herman Janež: Onstran žice - Gonars (2): Prihodi transportov s taborišniki (German: Jenseits des Zaunes - Gonars (2): The arrival of the prisoner transports ), multi-part series in the Slovenian weekly newspaper Dolenjski list, Novo mesto, August 9, 2012 , P. 18.
  3. ↑ Multilingual information board at the main entrance of the Gonars cemetery
  4. ↑ Carlo Spartaco Capogreco: I Campi del duce . Giulio Einaudi 2004, ISBN 88-06-16781-2 , p. 257.
  5. ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/news/29iht-camp_ed3_.html?pagewanted=all

Web links

Commons : KZ Gonars  - collection of images, videos and audio files