Repressions during government of DUCE

[StanislavB.]

I've read two opposite opinions on this subject: one says that there were no physical repressions, but there was "psychological" terror. The other opinion is that every fifth (5) (if I remeber correctly) was repressed according to official sources. However, in both cases there was no references to the sources. So can someone provide credible source on the subject? I also heard that there was concentration camps: what for they served (imrisoning of criminals, for example) and when did they appeared? Does anyone has the photos of this camps?

Thanks in advance.

[Davide Pastore]

I'm not an expert in the field, however AFAIK Mussolini's regime, although violently repressive by today's standards, was nearly benevolent when compared with his colleagues in Berlin and Moscow. Of course, a democracy would have been even better!!

And I've never heard of concentration camps (but I could be wrong).

Davide

[StanislavB.]

I agreed that fascist regime was less violent then communist and national-socialist, but in this topic I'm interested in pure facts, not comparations. I heard (to be precise -- read a text on the site) about conc.camps from the broadcast on the radio "Echo Moskvi" ("Echo of Moscow").

As for democracy we can now see it in Russia where population decreases to 1 million yeach year.

[Giovanni Acuto]

In terms of physical violence against its own people, there was of course no comparison between Italy and the nsdap regime. (At least until the RSI period, when some elements did follow the example of their "allies".)

Rather than concentration camps, the Fascist government tended to follow a policy of internal exile, where dissidents were compulsorily relocated, usually to an isolated village miles from nowhere. The classic account of this policy is of course Carlo Levi's Cristo si e fermato a Eboli (1945)

There were camps also, however; the island of Lipari housed an example. Francesco Nitti wrote an account of his experiences there in Escape (first published in 1930, in English).

[StanislavB.]

And is it true that fascists practised giving to drink a castor oil to a dissident to cause diarrhoea?

[Davide Pastore]

And is it true that fascists practised giving to drink a castor oil to a dissident to cause diarrhoea?

In early years (post-WW1 to early 1920s) yes, definitely. It was a phase of deep civilian unrest in Italy, with a lot of violence. However, after Mussolini got the power and felt sure of it, the situation was "normalized" - the country wanted peace (and would not have tolerated a violent government). When I answered I was writing about the fascist regime (late 1920s-1940).

Davide

[TISO]

And is it true that fascists practised giving to drink a castor oil to a dissident to cause diarrhoea?

I don't know for other parts of the country but in areas occupied after ww2 this was standard practice up to the end, especcialy against ethnic Slovenes (having books in Slovene, speaking, writing and singing in Slovene was strictly prohibited).
Italy did have some concentration camps like Gonars, island of Rab and a couple of others. Most of them (but not all) were established after the start of the war. They housed mostly civilians (entire families - children, women old poeple) in apalling conditions. Before that they filled the "normal" prisons with political dissidents.
Duce regime was not as benovelent as it is thought (or made to be later).

[StanislavB.]

TISO,

can you please point to the sources of your info? I'm going to made a Russian historical site on fascism and want to collect as many info as possible.
If you can share something with me, please!

[Andrej]

On the February 4th, 1940 Mussolini signed a decree to open the firsts 43 concentration camps.

The camps were located in every parts of Italy and since 1941, after the italian occupation of Jugoslavia, were created a lot of camps also in the zone administrated by italians to break off the jugoslavian resistence.

Perhaps the most famous camp, sadly, was the camp in the Isle of Rab, administrated by tenente colonnello Vincenzo Ciauli and a garrison with 2000 officers and soldiers plus 200 carabinieri.

[TISO]

First a little typo. I ment territories occupied after ww1 not ww2.

can you please point to the sources of your info?

There are numerous testimonies about this from poeple living in the area. There were also a few cases when poeple died as result of this. I have to consult a couple of books.

[Allen Milcic]

Rab (Arbe) concentration camp (from Wikipedia):

The Rab Concentration Camp was established during World War II in July 1942, when the Italians established a concentration camp near the village of Kampor on the island of Rab in the Adriatic Sea. The camp was disbanded after the Italian capitulation in September 1943.

Its capacity was to hold about 10,000 prisoners at a time, mostly Slovenians, Croats and Jews in separate departments. About 1200 prisoners died from starvation and inhospitable winter and summer weather conditions. Another 800 prisoners from Rab died later when they were relocated to other Italian concentration camps such as Gonars and Padova. Those prisoners who survived in September 1943 and were still strong enough formed the Rab batallion which resisted German occupation.

In 1953, a memorial was built on Edvard Ravnikar's plans, ironically, by prisoners of communist camp from the nearby island Goli Otok.

Due to Italian propaganda and its role in the last years of the World War II, not much is known about this camp outside borders of the former Yugoslavia. Even in 2003 the centre-right Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi could afford a statement without any consequences that during the time of Fascism, there were no concentration camps, but "just compulsory vacation" for the opposers of the regime.

From the International Herald Tribune:

Survivors of war camp lament Italy's amnesia

Thomas Fuller/IHT IHT
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
RAB, Croatia. Metod Milac says he remembers October on this wind-swept island because the nights turned cold and disease spread more quickly.

He recalls the cup of thin gruel at mealtime, a soup so watered down that he could count the grains of rice. And he remembered roll call, where Italian soldiers would yell: "Tutti fuori, anche morti!" Everyone out, including the dead.

Six decades after the Italian military imprisoned Slovenes, Croats and Jews in a concentration camp on this island, the memories are vivid for the few remaining survivors.

But as they reach their final years, the survivors lament that memories are apparently not as sharp across the Italian border. There is a general amnesia about the Rab concentration camp, they say.

Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister of Italy, recently told an Italian newspaper that the fascist government of Benito Mussolini "never killed anyone."

"Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile," Berlusconi was quoted as saying in La Voce di Rimini, an Italian newspaper.

Those comments angered the Rab survivors as well as others, mostly Slovenes, who endured Italian concentration camps at Treviso, Gonars, Padova and Renicci.

Berlusconi's words were condemned by many in Italy and around the world. But survivors of the Rab camp said they fit into a pattern.

Italy is often portrayed as having been a somewhat benign fascist power during World War II, a reluctant partner of the Nazi regime. The wartime Italian Army is remembered as hapless and inefficient compared to the ruthlessly brutal German war machine.

This is not what the Rab survivors remember.

Anton Vratusa, a former prisoner at Rab who went on to be Yugoslavia's ambassador at the United Nations, said that there were four distinct camps at Rab and a place that prisoners darkly referred to as the fifth camp, a cemetery where the hundreds who died of cold, starvation or illness were buried.

"The present-day generation in Italy doesn't know or knows very little about the real role of Italy during the Second World War," Vratusa said in a telephone interview.

The camps were a collection of more than a thousand open-air tents arrayed across a valley and surrounded by razor wire and guard towers. There was no organized medical care, limited water and very little food.

Vratusa and Milac, both Slovenes, said that they believed the Italians intended to kill everyone in the camp by starving them.

Yugoslavia at the time was carved up by the Axis powers, with Germany, Italy and Hungary each taking a chunk.

The prisoners were generally men suspected of resisting the Italian occupation army or women and children who lived in villages suspected of sympathizing with the resistance.

Established in July 1942, the camp held a total of about 10,000 people until it was disbanded in September 1943.

During winter months in Rab, the death toll rose sharply, mainly because prisoners were not given proper clothing and lived in tents exposed to the cold. Babies and children died first because they were more vulnerable to these brutal conditions.

By the time Italy capitulated in 1943, more than 1,200 prisoners had died, according to research by Bozidar Jezernik, a Slovenian historian and dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana. He estimates that the real death toll is around 2,000 when taking into account weakened people who were moved to other camps before they died.

More than a hundred of the victims were children under age 10, according to Jezernik, who based his estimate on Italian documents and the records of Slovenian and Croatian church officials.

Jews were held separately at Rab and were treated relatively better, survivors said. They had access to radio and newspapers and were better-fed. "We were prisoners; they were protected people," Vratusa said. "We used their assistance."

A unique partnership emerged between Jewish prisoners and Slovene and Croat partisans. After the Italians capitulated, a group of young Jewish men who were in decent physical shape joined the emaciated Slovenes to form a military unit - the Rab Brigade, they called it - to fight the German occupying army.

The brigade used weapons captured from their Italian prison guards and commandeered several Italian supply ships filled with uniforms, ammunition and food, including copious amount of parmesan cheese, a delicacy for the starved prisoners.

Stripped of their arms, the Italian guards were put on a boat and sent away. The Italian colonel in charge of the camp was captured and committed suicide.

By the murderous standards of the second world war, Rab was perhaps only a footnote of evil.

But Slovenian historians say that Italy's concentration camps deserve at least some mention in the annals of Western European history.

"I have checked many encyclopedias," Jezernik said, "and you won't find a single mention of Italian concentration camps."

Jezernik said that when he sought files from the Italian national archives in Rome in the 1990's, he was told by officials that most of the documents could not be divulged until 75 years after they were written. This would make them available around 2018.

David Wingeate Pike, a Paris-based historian of World War II and a former British intelligence officer in the Balkans, said one reason that Italian war crimes had not been fully investigated was because Allied forces did not have the same incentives to delve into them.

"In 1943, after all, Italy was on our side," Pike said. "I suppose the deal was: 'We don't want to know about your crimes but help us win this war.'" There were no trials of Italian war criminals as there were for the Germans and Japanese, Pike said.

Today there are perhaps other reasons to play down Italy's crimes. As Slovenia prepares to enter the European Union and Croatia aspires for membership, it is impolitic to dwell on Italy's wartime past.

Yet all of this geopolitical reasoning is not what interests the Rab survivors. In the twilight of their lives, they want the story to be told and remembered.

"Even in Slovenia they do not pay much attention to it," Milac said, "which hurts me a lot."

When Milac left the camp in January 1943 - he was lucky enough to be released early by the Italians - he was so weak and emaciated that he could not climb the ladder of the boat that took him back to the mainland.

Now a retired librarian in the United States, Milac in 2002 published "Resistance, Imprisonment and Forced Labor," a memoir of his time in the camp and other World War II experiences.

Today in Rab there are only a few scattered traces of the concentration camp.

A series of stone structures built with prison labor have been refurbished and are used as part of a mental asylum.

Grapes and corn grow where the prisoners' tents once stood. And a moss-covered stone tablet by the side of the road reads: "This is the concentration camp where many people lost their lives in terrible circumstances."

Down the road is a larger memorial with individual gravestones and a stainless steel plaque inscribed with hundreds of names.

The memorial was built in 1953 with prison labor from Goli Otok, the island where opponents of the Tito regime were imprisoned in Communist times.

The tragic irony of political prisoners building a monument to victims of Fascism is not lost on Jezernik, the Slovene professor. He said he once interviewed a man who was a prisoner of the Italians in Rab and subsequently a political prisoner at Goli Otok who helped build the monument in Rab.

"He was building a monument to himself," Jezernik said.

Petar Kurelic, a 78-year-old local resident who was born in a house overlooking the camp, said tourists were the main visitors to the memorial these days. Rab, a popular summer resort, is a 20-minute ferry ride from the Croatian mainland.

When he was a teenager, he said, Italian soldiers were alternatively kind and cruel, sometimes offering food to Rab residents, other times beating them or worse.

But today, Kurelic said the wounds have healed and German and Italian tourists are welcome on the island.

"Things change," he said. "The Germans and Italians used to be our enemies and we killed each other. Today we are friends," Kurelic added. "The memories are there, but the hatred is gone."

International Herald Tribune

http://www.istrianet.org/istria/news/eu ... 029rab.htm

Allen/

[zaptiè]

This camp was not for italians : it' s the difference. In Italy for italians was not camps only individual deportation in small villages .
And for the attitude of Italians on this camp you must remember that at the end of war a large number of italians ( from 10.000 to 30.000) where killed in the " fobie "( carsic caves) and 350.000 leave Istria and Dalmatia to other regions of Italy to escape to the genocide . Many in Italy are descendents or relatives of these peoples and also Slovenian and Croat today governaments says no one word about it

[StanislavB.]

And for the attitude of Italians on this camp you must remember that at the end of war a large number of italians ( from 10.000 to 30.000) where killed in the " fobie "( carsic caves)...

Do you mean this Italians were killed by Croatians or Slovenians?

[Davide Pastore]

Do you mean this Italians were killed by Croatians or Slovenians?

This is what many says.

Davide

[zaptiè]

By Youguslavians of Tito