Borgo San Dalmazzo Police Detention Center

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The Borgo San Dalmazzo police custody camp in the former Alpine barracks in Borgo San Dalmazzo ( Cuneo province on the Franco-Italian border) was a collection camp for the deportations of Italian Jews and those from other countries to German extermination camps . After the armistice of Cassibile under the leadership of the SS, it existed for about three months from September 18, 1943, and then again for a good two months until February 13, 1944 under the control of the fascist republic of Salo, established after the liberation of Benito Mussolini from Germany .

prehistory

Starting in 1941, the Vichy government required foreign Jews in the part of France not occupied by German troops to stay in specially designated areas ( residence obligation ). Among other things, this applied to Saint-Martin-Vésubie , a town with 1,300 inhabitants at 700 m above sea level in the Alpes-Maritimes, about 60 km north of Nice.

In November 1942, as part of the war association of the so-called Axis Powers , the Italian army occupied part of southern France beyond the former Piedmontese area around Monaco and Nice. She tolerated the Jews in her sphere of influence. The fact that they were not persecuted and certainly not extradited to the Germans offered a certain degree of security to thousands of Jewish citizens who had been on the run for several years in France from the advancing German army. They came from all over Europe: Poland, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, Belgium, France, Turkey and the Soviet Union.

The armistice between Italy and the Allies of September 8, 1943 turned the situation on its head. The German troops and SS units disarmed the Italian soldiers who had not been informed by their own government in the theaters of war and interned hundreds of thousands of them. The Italian army withdrew from France and a large part of the Jews of southern France also fled to Italy (Piedmont), as security was expected there again. From Saint-Martin-Vésubie alone, between 800 and 1,100 people tried to reach the province of Cuneo, which includes the small town of Borgo San Dalmazzo at the foot of the Alps, on foot over two Alpine passes at an altitude of 2,400 m. For the others, the worst fears came true. On September 22, 1943, the Germans tracked down everyone who had stayed in Saint-Martin because of the physical exertion, arrested them and deported them to extermination camps.

Police detention camp SS / SD

Memorial for the deportees at the train station

The fate of many refugees was hardly better, because the hoped-for protection in Piedmont turned into the opposite. German troops had already marched into northern Italy on September 12th, freed the captured Mussolini and under his leadership established a fascist puppet state, the "Italian Social Republic" or "Government of Salo". A company of the 2nd Battalion of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , commanded by Joachim Peiper , set up its command in an abandoned barracks of the Italian mountain troops ( Alpini ) in Borgo San Dalmazzo and on September 18 ordered all "foreigners" (the Jewish refugees) to themselves to be found there. 349 refugees were initially held in the improvised police detention center. The Jews of Cuneo, who were also interned ten days later, were later released.

On November 21, 1943, at least 328 of the refugees from southern France were deported via Nice to the Drancy transit camp near Paris. Liliana Picciotto Fargion followed the fate of 326 deportees as closely as possible: they left the Drancy assembly and transit camp with three transports on December 7th and 17th, 1943 and on January 20th, 1944 towards Auschwitz . Probably only ten of them survived.

There were also great examples in Piedmont of courageous support for refugees who, despite the physical strain behind them, were able to evade arrest by the SS. Local families gave shelter and help with onward travel to safe areas. Clergymen had set up an aid network. A few refugees escaped deportation to Drancy on November 21st, mostly sick people who were treated in the hospital in Cuneo and hidden by the staff there.

RSI provincial concentration camps

With the Police Ordinance No. 5 of the Social Republic of Italy (RSI), the Italian authorities were asked to bring all Jews residing in Italian territory to concentration camps. Those arrested were first taken to the bursary prison and then transferred to provincial concentration camps ( campi di concentramento provinciali ).

The Italian police arrested the first victims - from the municipality of Saluzzo - in the Borgo San Dalmazzo camp, which was emptied by the SS and used as a provincial concentration camp, in early December 1943. The total of 26 prisoners (whose fate is also documented) were transferred to the Fossoli transit camp on February 15, 1944 . 23 of them left Fossoli in the direction of Auschwitz on the transport on February 22, 1944, in which the writer Primo Levi was also. Only two survivors are known.

literature

Web links

Commons : Borgo San Dalmazzo Memorial  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see web link The Camps: Borgo San Dalmazzo of the Associazione nazionale ex deportati nei campi nazisti.
  2. ↑ see web link Study Group German Resistance: Memorial Saint-Martin-de-Vésubie .
  3. ↑ a b c d e see web link memorial site portal: History of the Borgo San Dalmazzo concentration camp .
  4. ^ Klaus Voigt: Refuge on Revocation - Exile in Italy 1933-1945 . Klett-Cotta 1993, Volume 2, ISBN 3-608-91160-X , p. 348 f.
  5. ↑ Mateo Stefanori: I Campi provinciali per ebrei nella Repubblica Sociale Italiana . Retrieved April 5, 2017

Coordinates: 44 ° 19 ′ 42.5 ″  N , 7 ° 29 ′ 20.5 ″  E