Italy Key Words

Key terminology, regions, and sites related to the Holocaust in Italy include:

• Campo di Fossoli Located near Carpi in northern Italy, it was the principal transit camp from which Italian Jews—including the famous chemist and writer Primo Levi—were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
• Displaced Persons Camp (“DP Camp”) A series of camps established by the Allies after World War II to house survivors of Nazi persecution and refugees from eastern Europe, known as displaced persons, or DPs, while they awaited repatriation to their home countries or resettlement in a new destination.
• Italian Social Republic Also known as the Salò Republic, this puppet state in northern and central Italy was headed by Mussolini after he was rescued by the Germans in September 1943.
• Racial Laws A series of antisemitic laws passed by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist regime starting in 1938. They stripped Italian Jews of their citizenship, banned them from public schools and universities, and restricted property ownership.
• Risiera di San Sabba A former rice-processing mill in Trieste. It was transformed by Nazi occupiers into a police transit camp and served as the only structural extermination camp with a crematorium oven on Italian soil.