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The Rab concentration camp (; ; ) was one of several Italian concentration camps. It was established during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, in July 1942, on the Italian-annexed island of Rab (now in
Croatia Croatia, officially the Republic of Croatia, is a country in Central Europe, Central and Southeast Europe, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. It borders Slovenia to the northwest, Hungary to the northeast, Serbia to the east, Bosnia and Herze ...
). According to historians James Walston James Walston (1997
History and Memory of the Italian Concentration Camps
''Historical Journal'', p. 40.
and Carlo Spartaco Capogeco,Cresciani, Gianfranco (2004
Clash of civilisations
, Italian Historical Society Journal, Vol.12, No.2, p.7
at 18%, the annual mortality rate in the camp was higher than the average mortality rate in the Nazi concentration camp of
Buchenwald Buchenwald (; 'beech forest') was a German Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within the Altreich (Old Reich) territori ...
(15%). According to a report by Monsignor Jože Srebrnič, Bishop of
Krk Krk (; ; ; ; archaic German: ''Vegl'', ; ) is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Rijeka in the Bay of Kvarner and part of Primorje-Gorski Kotar county. Krk is tied with Cres as the largest Adriatic island, depending o ...
on 5 August 1943 to Pope
Pius XII Pope Pius XII (; born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli; 2 March 18769 October 1958) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 2 March 1939 until his death on 9 October 1958. He is the most recent p ...
: "witnesses, who took part in the burials, state unequivocally that the number of the dead totals at least 3,500". According to Yugoslav estimates of the Commission for Determining the Crimes of the Occupiers, 4,641 detainees died at the camp, including 800 inmates who died while being transported from Rab to the Gonars and Padua concentration camps in Italy. However, other sources place the figure at around 2,000. In July 1943, after the
fall of the Fascist regime in Italy The Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy, also known in Italy as (, ; ), came as a result of parallel plots led respectively by Count Dino Grandi and King Victor Emmanuel III during the spring and summer of 1943, culminating with a successfu ...
, the camp was closed, but some of the remaining Jewish prisoners were deported by German forces to the
extermination camp Nazi Germany used six extermination camps (), also called death camps (), or killing centers (), in Central Europe, primarily in occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million peoplemostly Jewsin the Holocau ...
at
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
.
Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...
,
Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...
and
Ethiopia Ethiopia, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country located in the Horn of Africa region of East Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Ken ...
requested the
extradition In an extradition, one Jurisdiction (area), jurisdiction delivers a person Suspect, accused or Conviction, convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, into the custody of the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforc ...
of some 1,200 Italian war criminals, who, however, were never brought before an appropriate tribunal because the British government, at the beginning of the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
, saw in
Pietro Badoglio Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba, 1st Marquess of Sabotino ( , ; 28 September 1871 – 1 November 1956), was an Italian general during both World Wars and the first viceroy of Italian East Africa. With the fall of the Fascist regim ...
a guarantor of an
anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...
post-war Italy. In the autumn of 1943,
Yugoslav Partisans The Yugoslav Partisans,Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian language, Macedonian, and Slovene language, Slovene: , officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia sh-Latn-Cyrl, Narodnooslobodilačka vojska i partizanski odr ...
, led by the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of SFR Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats a ...
, rescued approximately 2,500 Jews from the island.


Establishment of the camp

Under Italian army commander
Mario Roatta Mario Roatta (2 February 1887 – 7 January 1968) was an Italian general. After serving in World War I he rose to command the Corpo Truppe Volontarie which assisted Francisco Franco's nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. He was the d ...
's watch, the
ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it ...
and violence committed against the Slovene and Croat civilian population easily matched that of the Germans with
summary execution In civil and military jurisprudence, summary execution is the putting to death of a person accused of a crime without the benefit of a free and fair trial. The term results from the legal concept of summary justice to punish a summary offense, a ...
s, hostage-taking and hostage killing, reprisals, internments (both in Rab and at the
Gonars concentration camp The Gonars concentration camp was one of the several Italian concentration camps and it was established on February 23, 1942, near Gonars, Italy. Many prisoners were transferred to this camp from another Italian concentration camp, the Rab co ...
), and the burning of houses and villages. Additional special instructions, which included an edict that orders must be "carried out most energetically and without any false compassion", were issued by Roatta: :"(...) if necessary don't shy away from using cruelty. It must be a ''complete cleansing''. We need to intern all the inhabitants and put Italian families in their place."Steinberg, Jonathan (2002) ''All Or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941-1943'', Routledge; , pg. 34 Roatta in his Circolare No.3 "issued orders to kill hostages, demolish houses and whole villages: his idea was to deport all inhabitants of Slovenia and replace them with Italian settlers" in the
Province of Ljubljana The Province of Ljubljana (, , ) was the central-southern area of Slovenia. In 1941, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy, and after 1943 occupied by Nazi Germany. Created on May 3, 1941, it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when the Slovene Parti ...
, in response to Slovene partisans' resistance in the province. Following Roatta's orders, one of his soldiers in his July 1, 1942 letter wrote home: :"We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them." Uroš Roessmann, one of the Rab internees, a student at the time, remembers: :"There were frequent '' razzias'' when the train taking us to school in Ljubljana from our village of Polje pulled in to the main station. Italian soldiers picked us all up. Some were released, and others were sent to (Italian)
concentration camps A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploit ...
. Nobody knew who decided, or on what grounds.Corsellis, John; Marcus Ferrar (2005). ''Slovenia 1945: Memories of Death and Survival After World War II'', pp. 26-27. I.B. Tauris; The camp at Rab, built near the village of Kampor, was one of a number of such camps established along the Adriatic coast to accommodate Slovenian and Croatian prisoners. Opened in July 1942, it was officially termed "Camp for the concentration and internment of war civilians - Rab" (''Campo di concentramento per internati civili di Guerra – Arbe'').


Inmates and camp conditions

Slovenes and Croatians, many of whom were women and children, including pregnant women and newborns, suffered from cold and hunger in open-air tents, surrounded by barbed wire fence and guard towers. At its peak there were up to 15,000 internees.''Kampor 1942-1943: Hrvati, Slovenci i Židovi u koncentracijskom logoru Kampor na otoku Rabu'' ("Kampor 1942-1943: Croats, Slovenes, and Jews in the Kampor concentration camp on the island of Rab"). Rijeka: Adamic, 1998. Conditions at the camp were described as appalling: "filthy, muddy, overcrowded and swarming with insects". Slovene writer Metod Milač, an inmate at the camp, described in his memoirs how prisoners were quartered six to a tent and slowly starved to death on a daily diet of thin soup, a few grains of rice and small pieces of bread. Prisoners fought with each other for access to the camp's meager water supply, a single barrel, while many became infested with lice and wracked with dysentery caused by the unhygienic conditions. Part of the encampment was washed away by flash flooding. Some Italian authorities eventually acknowledged that the treatment of the inmates was counterproductive; in January 1943, the commanding officer of the 14th Battalion of Carabinieri complained: :"In the last few days some internees have returned from the concentration camp in such a state of physical emaciation, a few in an absolutely pitiful condition, that a terrible impression has been created in the general population. Treating the Slovene population like this palpably undermines our dignity and is contrary to the principles of justice and humanity to which we make constant reference in our propaganda."Steinberg, Jonathan. ''All Or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust, 1941-1943'', pp. 131-33. Routledge, 2002;


Jewish prisoners at Rab

By 1 July 1943, 2,118 Yugoslav Jews were recorded having been interned by the Italian army. Starting in June 1943, they were moved into a newly constructed section of the Rab concentration camp, alongside the Slovenian and Croatian section. Unlike the Slovene and Croatian prisoners, the Jewish ones were provided with better accommodation, sanitation and services; they were provided with wooden and brick barracks and houses in contrast to the overcrowded tents sheltering the Slavic prisoners. Historian Franc Potočnik, also an inmate in the Slavic section of the camp, described the much better conditions in the Jewish section:
"The lavicinternees in Camp I could watch through the double barriers of barbed wire what took place in the Jewish camp. The Jewish internees were living under conditions of true internment for their 'protection', whereas the Slovenes and Croats were in a regime of 'repression'. . . . They brought a lot of baggage with them. Italian soldiers carried their luggage into little houses of brick destined for them. Almost every family had its own little house.... They were reasonably well dressed; in comparison, of course, to other internees."
The difference in treatment was the consequence of a conscious policy by the Italian military authorities. In July 1943, the Civil Affairs Office at the 2nd Army HQ issued a memorandum on "The Treatment of Jews in the Rab Camp", which was enthusiastically approved by chief of the office and the 2nd Army's chief of staff. The memorandum's author, a Major Prolo, urged that the infrastructure of the camp must be: :"...comfortable for all internees without risk to the maintenance of order and discipline. Inactivity and boredom are terrible evils which work silently on the individual and collectivity. It is prudent that in the great camp of Rab those concessions made to the Jews of Porto Re /nowiki>Kraljevica">Kraljevica.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Kraljevica">/nowiki>Kraljevica/nowiki> to make their lives comfortable should not be neglected." He concluded with a clear reference to Italian awareness of the massacres of Jews that were ongoing elsewhere in German-occupied Europe: :"The Jews (...) have the duties of all civilians interned for protective reasons, and a right to equivalent treatment, but for ''particular, exceptional political and contingent reasons'' [emphasis added], it seems opportune to concede, while maintaining discipline unimpaired, a treatment consciously felt to be 'Italian' which they are used to from our military authorities, and with a courtesy which is complete and never half-hearted." Some members of the Italian military also saw humane treatment of the Jews as a way of preserving Italy's military and political honour in the face of German encroachments on Italian sovereignty; Steinberg describes this as "a kind of national conspiracy mong the Italian militaryto frustrate the much greater and more systematic brutality of the Nazi state." According to the Slovenian Rab survivor,
Anton Vratuša Anton Vratuša (born Vratussa Antal; 21 February 1915 – 30 July 2017) was a Slovenian politician and diplomat who was Prime Minister of Slovenia from 1978 to 1980, and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia's ambassador to the U ...
, who later became
Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...
's ambassador to the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
: "We were prisoners; they were protected people. We used their assistance."''


Notable WWII-era prisoners

* Thea Altaras (1924–2004) * Mihael Montiljo (1928–2006) * Maja Bošković-Stulli (1922–2012) * Alfred Pal (1920–2010) * Ivan Rein (1905–1943) *
Anton Vratuša Anton Vratuša (born Vratussa Antal; 21 February 1915 – 30 July 2017) was a Slovenian politician and diplomat who was Prime Minister of Slovenia from 1978 to 1980, and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia's ambassador to the U ...
(1915–2017) * Jakob Finci (b. 1943)


Closure of the camp

By mid-1943 the camp's population stood at about 7,400 people, of whom some 2,700 were Jews. The fall of Mussolini in late July 1943 increased the likelihood that the Jews on Rab would fall into German hands, prompting the Italian Foreign Ministry to repeatedly instruct the General Staff that the Jews should not be released unless they themselves requested it. The ministry also began to put in place a mass transfer of the Jews to the Italian mainland. However, on 16 August 1943 the Italian military authorities ordered that the Jews were to be released from the camp, although those that wished could stay.Rodogno, Davide (2006) ''Fascism's European Empire: Italian Occupation During the Second World War'', Cambridge University Press, , pp. 354, 446 The island remained in Italian hands until after the Armistice with Italy was signed on 8 September 1943, when the Germans seized control. About 245 of the Jewish inmates of the camp joined the Rab Brigade of the 24th Division of the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, forming the Rab battalion, though they were eventually dispersed among other Partisan units. Although most of the Jews from the camp were evacuated to Partisan-held territory, 204 (7.5%) of them, the elderly or sick, were left behind and were sent to
Auschwitz Auschwitz, or Oświęcim, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschw ...
by the Germans for extermination. Ivan Vranetić was honored as one of the Croatian Righteous among the Nations for helping save the Jews evacuated from Rab in September 1943, one of whom he would later marry and retire to Israel.


Memories of survivors

Survivors of the camp include
Anton Vratuša Anton Vratuša (born Vratussa Antal; 21 February 1915 – 30 July 2017) was a Slovenian politician and diplomat who was Prime Minister of Slovenia from 1978 to 1980, and Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia's ambassador to the U ...
, who went on to be
Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...
's ambassador at the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
(1967–69) and was
Prime Minister of Slovenia The prime minister of Slovenia, officially the president of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia (), is the Head of government, head of the Government of Slovenia, Government of the Slovenia, Republic of Slovenia. There have been nine offi ...
(1978–80), Jakob Finci who was born in the camp, was later
Bosnia Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...
's ambassador, and Elvira Kohn, a Jewish Croatian photo-journalist who described her experiences at the camp in some detail.


Collective memory repression during the Cold War

Although a memorial and cemetery were built at the site of the camp by the Goli Otok prisoners in 1955 based on a design by
Edvard Ravnikar Edvard Ravnikar (4 December 1907 – 23 August 1993) was a Slovenian architect. Ravnikar was born in Novo Mesto and was a student of architect Jože Plečnik. Later, he led the new generation of Slovene architects, notable for developing ...
, and the site has also been equipped with memorial signs in Croatian, Slovene, English, and Italian, during the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
the
collective memory Collective memory is the shared pool of memories, knowledge and information of a social group that is significantly associated with the group's identity. The English phrase "collective memory" and the equivalent French phrase "la mémoire collect ...
was repressed due to British government involvement in non-extradition of Italians accused of war crimes, especially
Pietro Badoglio Pietro Badoglio, 1st Duke of Addis Abeba, 1st Marquess of Sabotino ( , ; 28 September 1871 – 1 November 1956), was an Italian general during both World Wars and the first viceroy of Italian East Africa. With the fall of the Fascist regim ...
, in order to guarantee an
anti-communist Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...
postwar Italy.


Historical revisionism

The repression of memory led to historical revisionism in Italy. A photograph of an internee from Rab concentration camp was included in 1963 anthology "Notte sul'Europa" misidentified as a photograph of an internee of a German camp, when in fact the internee was Janez Mihelčič, born 1885 in Babna Gorica, who died at Rab in 1943. Capogreco, C.S. (2004
"I campi del duce: l'internamento civile nell'Italia fascista, 1940-1943"
Giulio Einaudi editore.
In 2003 the Italian media published
Silvio Berlusconi Silvio Berlusconi ( ; ; 29 September 193612 June 2023) was an Italian Media proprietor, media tycoon and politician who served as the prime minister of Italy in three governments from 1994 to 1995, 2001 to 2006 and 2008 to 2011. He was a mem ...
's statement that
Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 un ...
merely "used to send people on vacation".''Survivors of war camp lament Italy's amnesia''
, 2003, ''
International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...
''


See also

*
Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy (, ) was a unitary state that existed from 17 March 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 10 June 1946, when the monarchy wa ...
*
Gonars concentration camp The Gonars concentration camp was one of the several Italian concentration camps and it was established on February 23, 1942, near Gonars, Italy. Many prisoners were transferred to this camp from another Italian concentration camp, the Rab co ...
* Fascist Legacy


References


Sources

* Giuseppe Piemontese (1946): Twenty-nine months of Italian occupation of the
Province of Ljubljana The Province of Ljubljana (, , ) was the central-southern area of Slovenia. In 1941, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy, and after 1943 occupied by Nazi Germany. Created on May 3, 1941, it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when the Slovene Parti ...
. * Effie Pedaliu (2004)
Britain and the ‘Hand-Over’ of Italian War Criminals to Yugoslavia, 1945–48
''Journal of Contemporary History'', Vol. 39, No. 4, 503-529 (JStor.org preview) * Alessandra Kersevan (2008): '' Lager italiani. Pulizia etnica e campi di concentramento fascisti per civili jugoslavi 1941-1943''. Editore Nutrimenti,


Further reading


Campi Italiani d Internamento e di Deportazione (in Italian)

''Survivors of war camp lament Italy's amnesia''
, 2003, ''
International Herald Tribune The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France, for international English-speaking readers. It published under the name ''International Herald Tribune'' starting in 1967, but its ...
''
Concentration camp memorial complex

Report on the Jews who escaped the Holocaust via the Adriatic coast

Slovenian Children in the Italian Concentration Camps (1942-1943) (in Italian; abstract in English)
* Metod Milač, ''Resistance, Imprisonment and Forced Labor : A Slovene Student in World War II.'' * Božidar Jezernik, ''Struggle for Survival : Italian Concentration Camps for Slovenes during the Second World War'' (Ljubljana : Društvo za preučevanje zgodovine, literature in antropologije, 1999) *


External links


Antifascist organization of Rab

Official Rab concentration camp memorial museum site


A memorial plaque for the victims of fascism in Kampor on the island of Rab
Kampor - concentration camp sur Flickr: partage de photos


{{Authority control Italian fascist internment camps in Croatia Italian war crimes in Yugoslavia Military history of Italy War crimes in Croatia World War II sites in Croatia Yugoslavia in World War II World War II crimes in Yugoslavia World War II concentration camps in Yugoslavia Rab 1942 establishments in Yugoslavia 1943 disestablishments in Yugoslavia Prison islands