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The Holocaust in Italy was the persecution, deportation, and murder of Jews between 1943 and 1945 in the Italian Social Republic, the part of the Kingdom of Italy occupied by Nazi Germany after the Italian surrender on 8 September 1943, during World War II.
The history of the Jews in Italy spans more than two thousand years to the present. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to the pre-Christian Roman period and has continued, despite periods of extreme persecution and expulsions, until the present.
Italy joined the war in June 1940. Foreign Jews who had not left Italy until that time were arrested and detained in camps. At the same time, Italy refused to deliver the Jews residing in Italian controlled areas in France, Greece and Croatia for deportation.
Italy was home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in Europe. It was also a member of the Axis alliance with Nazi Germany. Learn about Italy during WWII and the Holocaust.
In service of the fascist intent to cure national traits that had supposedly contributed in the past to Italian “backwardness” and national fragmentation, the Jew emerged after 1938 as a...
During the years 1938–43, prior to the loss of Italian sovereignty, Fascist Italy waged a debilitating campaign against its Jewish population. The passage of anti-Jewish laws, introduced primarily before the Second World War and without German interference, dealt a sharp blow to the Italian Jewish community.
Between 1939 and 1943, over 100 concentration camps were built in Italy and occupied territories such as Croatia. The majority of the camps held prisoners of war and political opponents, but many became deportation camps for Jews, Roma, gay men, and other prisoners who were later transferred to extermination camps north of the Alps.
