Nocra concentration camp

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Dahlak archipelago off Eritrea

The Nocra concentration camp was operated from 1936 to 1941 by fascist Italy on the Eritrean island of Nakura in the northern Red Sea . Along with the Danane concentration camp, it was one of two penal camps that were used to intern political prisoners from Italian East Africa as a result of the Abyssinian War.

With a death rate of 58 percent, Nocra is considered the most brutal of all Italian concentration camps and is also classified by historians as a death or extermination camp .

history

The Nocra concentration camp was located on an inhospitable island near Massaua , one of the most extreme climatic zones in the world. Italy had already opened a prison there in 1895, but has since closed it. The dilapidated facilities first had to be repaired for the new concentration camp. Nocra was finally surrounded by a four-meter-high outer wall with barbed wire, and eight-meter-high wooden towers with sheltered platforms for military personnel protruded from the four corners of the camp. This was equipped with floodlights for the night and machine guns. The inmates were housed in tents in which any light (including candles) was strictly forbidden. The camp had only one water well to supply the concentration camp inmates. In addition to an area for shared open-air showers, the center of the facility was home to the hanging gallows for the execution of the death penalty. The latrines, covered by sticks and branches, were in turn directly adjacent to “places of punishment”, i.e. torture sites.

In Italian East Africa, concentration camps were not among the central institutions of fascist persecution - members of the resistance and dissidents were usually shot by the Italians immediately after their capture. In 1937 there were around 500 political prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment in the Nocra concentration camp, mainly members of the secular and spiritual elite of the Abyssinian Empire . With more political prisoners and Africans initially brought to Italy, the number of internees rose to 1,500 by 1939, including women and children. As a prison camp , Nocra was characterized on the one hand by a strict organization with which the imprisoned prisoners were to be controlled. On the other hand, the punishment of the interned "rebels", "subversives", "anarchists", "troublemakers", "schemers" or "enemies of the Italian people" was in the foreground. The camp institutions did not intend to re-educate the inmates, but only to discipline them.

The concentration camp inmates also had to do forced labor to manufacture cement or were assigned to the Italian oil company Agip to work on oil exploration. The prisoners did their forced labor, among other things, in stone quarries with high humidity and daytime temperatures of up to 50 ° C. Everyone was obliged to do this work, the only exceptions being the sick, people over sixty, children under fourteen and pregnant women. Malaria , dysentery, poor nutrition and isolation also led to a very high death rate. When Nocra was liberated by British soldiers on May 6, 1941, they found the 332 surviving Ethiopians in a condition comparable to that of the prisoners who were later liberated from German extermination camps . The survivors were seriously ill, and some died before they even reached the mainland. Of the 114 former inmates who were immediately admitted to the hospital, 30 percent were unable to walk. Nine severely emaciated people died on arrival at the hospital.

evaluation

According to the British historian Ian Campbell (2017), the Nocra concentration camp can practically be described as a death camp . With a death rate of 58 percent and its location in one of the hottest places on earth, Nocra was "the most terrible and at the same time the least known of all Italian concentration camps". The Italian historian Angelo Del Boca (2004) describes Nocra as an "extermination camp".

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Mariana De Carlo: Colonial internment camps in Africa Orientale Italiana - The Case of Dhanaane (Somalia). In: Lars Berge, Iram Taddia (ed.): Themes in Modern African History and Culture. Libreriauniversitarai 2013, p. 199 f; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 142 f.
  2. ^ Mariana De Carlo: Colonial internment camps in Africa Orientale Italiana - The Case of Dhanaane (Somalia). In: Lars Berge, Iram Taddia (ed.): Themes in Modern African History and Culture. Libreriauniversitarai 2013, p. 198 f; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 142 f.
  3. ↑ Nicola Labanca: Italian Colonial Interment. In: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Mia Fuller (eds.): Italian Colonialism. New York 2005, pp. 27-36, here p. 32; Aram Mattioli: Experimental field of violence. The Abyssinian War and its international significance 1935–1941. Zurich 2005, p. 143; Alberto Sbacchi: Italy and the Treatment of the Ethiopian Aristocracy, 1937-1940 . International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1977, p. 218
  4. ↑ Angelo Del Boca: Fascism and Colonialism - The Myth of the Decent Italians . In: Irmtrud Wojak, Susanne Meinl (ed.): Genocide and war crimes in the first half of the 20th century . Campus 2004, p. 196; Mariana De Carlo: Colonial internment camps in Africa Orientale Italiana - The Case of Dhanaane (Somalia). In: Lars Berge, Iram Taddia (ed.): Themes in Modern African History and Culture. Libreriauniversitarai 2013, p. 199.
  5. ^ Ian Campbell: The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. London 2017, p. 340.
  6. ^ Ian Campbell: The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy's National Shame. London 2017, p. 234.
  7. ↑ Angelo Del Boca: Fascism and Colonialism. The myth of the "decent Italians". In: Fritz Bauer Institute (ed.): Genocide and war crimes in the first half of the 20th century. Frankfurt am Main 2004, pp. 193–202, here p. 196