Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp

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Risiera di San Sabba: Factory building with memorial on the site of the blown crematorium

The Risiera di San Sabba was a National Socialist concentration camp in the Italian city ​​of Trieste . It was the only concentration camp on Italian soil to have a crematorium and is therefore often incorrectly referred to as an extermination camp . In total, an estimated 20,000-25,000 prisoners passed through the Risiera di San Sabba. The estimates of the number of people killed there (Jewish prisoners, partisans and anti-fascists) vary between 3,000 and 5,000.

history

After the announcement of the armistice between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies on September 8, 1943, the area around Trieste ( Friuli , Venezia Giulia , Istria ) was administered by the National Socialist German Empire as the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone . In the course of the so-called “anti-partisan fight” there were severe reprisals against the civilian population. The San Sabba camp was set up in October 1943 at the instigation of the higher SS and police leader in Trieste, Odilo Globocnik , in the multi-storey factory buildings of an earlier rice mill ( Risiera) built in 1913 in the Trieste suburb of San Sabba (in today's Valmaura district). In the building, which has not been in use since 1929, the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 339 was set up for Italian prisoners of war in September 1943 , and on October 20 it was converted into a "police detention center". It was mainly used to detain hostages, partisans and other political prisoners, but also as a collection camp for Jews before they were deported to the extermination camps . Numerous resistance fighters were tortured during interrogation and murdered in the camp (shot, beaten to death or gassed in gas vans ). For the cremation of the corpses, the former drying oven of the rice mill was converted into a crematorium in March 1944 under the direction of Erwin Lambert , who had already built the gas chambers and crematoriums in Treblinka and Sobibor , which was connected to the existing 40 m high factory chimney. It was put into operation on April 4, 1944 with the cremation of the bodies of 70 hostages shot the day before. The Risiera also served as a warehouse for seized and stolen valuables.

The camp staff consisted for the most part of experienced specialists in factory-based human extermination. The camp was subordinate to the “ Special Department Operation R ”, which was commanded by SS-Sturmbannführer Christian Wirth , who had previously headed the Belzec , Sobibor and Treblinka extermination camps . When he was killed by Yugoslav partisans in the spring of 1944 , SS-Obersturmbannführer Dietrich Allers followed him . Camp commanders included Gottlieb Hering and Josef Oberhauser . Before their deployment in Trieste, they were initially involved in the "euthanasia" campaign T4 in the mass murder of mentally or physically handicapped people, after which they were transferred to the General Government in order to participate in the extermination of at least 2 million people as part of Aktion Reinhardt . Together with Odilo Globocnik, they finally came to the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone.

At the end of April 1945 the camp was abandoned; the crematorium building was blown up on the night of April 29th to 30th, 1945 in order to cover up traces.

After the war, refugees were initially housed in the camp buildings; then the buildings were left to decay. Declared a national memorial in 1965, after extensive restoration work, it was opened to the public in 1975 as the municipal Museo della Risiera di San Sabba .

A criminal trial took place in their absence in Trieste in 1975/76 against the camp officials, Allers and Oberhauser. Allers died before the end of the trial, Oberhauser was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 1976, but was safe from extradition in Germany and therefore did not have to serve the sentence.

building

Today the following buildings still exist and can be visited:

  • The death row
  • In addition, 17 cells, in each of which up to six prisoners were locked. These cells were primarily intended for political prisoners, Slovenes, Croats and Jews who were to be killed days or weeks later. The first two cells were also used for torture, and after the end of the war, thousands of ID cards were found here.
  • In the building next door there are larger rooms on four floors in which men, women and children who were intended for deportation to other camps ( Dachau , Mauthausen , Auschwitz ) were locked up .
  • In the central building, once the service building and barracks, there is now a museum.
  • A pond was created on the floor plan of the blasted crematorium.

Others

The Risiera di San Sabba plays a central role in the 2006 novel Heldenfriedhof by the German author Thomas Harlan , in the 2015 novel Non luogo a procedere (German: procedure set , 2017) by the Italian author Claudio Magris and in the 2016 novel Totenlied (Original title: Playing with Fire ) by the American writer Tess Gerritsen .

In November 2008, the then foreign ministers of Germany and Italy, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Franco Frattini , visited the Risiera and then announced the establishment of a commission of historians to deal with the German-Italian war past. This German-Italian commission of historians , set up on March 28, 2009, presented its final report in December 2012.

Web links

Commons : Risiera di San Sabba  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • René Moehrle: Persecution of Jews in Trieste during Fascism and National Socialism 1922–1945. Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-86331-195-7 , pp. 357-370.
  • Documentation: The killing camps in the Risiera di San Sabba in Trieste. In: zeitgeschichte, Heft 3/4 1996, ISBN 3-7100-0206-0 , pp 113-122.
  • Juliane Wetzel: Italy. In: Wolfgang Benz , Barbara Distel (eds.): The place of terror . History of the National Socialist Concentration Camps. Volume 9: Labor education camps, ghettos, youth protection camps, police detention camps, special camps, gypsy camps, forced labor camps. CH Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-406-57238-8 .

Fiction

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nicole Henneberg: Claudio Magris' new novel: The murderers came from the best circles in Trieste. In: FAZ.net . May 27, 2017, accessed March 21, 2020 (review).
  2. ↑ Mariano Gabriele, Wolfgang Schieder and others: Report of the German-Italian Commission of Historians appointed by the Foreign Ministers of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Italian Republic on March 28, 2009. (pdf, 639 kB) July 2012, accessed on March 21, 2020 .

Coordinates: 45 ° 37 '15.2 "  N , 13 ° 47'21.3"  E