Behind the Battle Lines:Italian Atrocities and the Persecution of Arabs,Berbers,and Jews in North Africa during WW2

[CogCalgary]

https://academia.edu/resource/work/11790526

[CogCalgary]

"For counterinsurgency The PAI even built up a secret service branch,the The Offizio speciale di instructions (instruziones) di Polizia,which relied heavily on informants and agents."
Obviously OVRA.
PAI is Polizia dell' Africa Italiane.
Evidence that Rommel was complicit in war crimes is discussed.

[CogCalgary]

Giado.
"The worst of these CAMPI di CONCENTRAMENTO was situated in Giado,a small town 147 miles south of Tripoli.Opened in 1942,the camp was inhabited by about 3000 prisoners,600 of whom died due to exposure,malnourished,or disease."

[CogCalgary]

"The high mortality rate was the consequence of extremely poor living conditions and forced labor:the prisoners received only 100 grams of bread a day and had to carry heavy stones from one end of the camp to the other and back again.Physically weakened,many prisoners succumbed to disease."
Typhus.

[CogCalgary]

"Eric Salerno suggests that Italian authorities used forced labor deliberately as a means to kill off internees."80.
"The camp commander told at least one prisoner that the Jews had been transported to Giado so that they could die there.Indeed,after the Axis defeat at El Alamein,the camp was to be disbanded and all the internees killed(though we do not know on whose orders).
Those prisoners who were still able to move were to be executed with machine guns;the sick were to be burned alive in the hospital.For hours the internees awaited what seemed like an inevitable death-it seems that they had to wait with the machine guns in view- as they waited for the order to kill them to be confirmed by the military command."
"The order was rescinded for reasons that remain unclear."

[CogCalgary]

Allied POWS were held in different camps for white and non white.The non white camps were apparently quite bad.

[David Thompson]

CogcCalgaray -- You wrote:

Allied POWS were held in different camps for white and non white.The non white camps were apparently quite bad.

You didn't give a sources or sources for this generalization. What is it?

[CogCalgary]

Page 435
"It is not surprising,therefore,that the Italian military administration set up a camp system for Allied POW's that reflected the "racial hierarchy"propagated by the Fascist regime.Soldiers of color were systematically discriminated against.The military interned non-whites in separate camps that lacked adequate facilities and provided them with lesser rations than it did others."(88)

"The latter was a clear violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929:Articles 11 to 13 state that the provisions for all prisoners must be of a quality and quantity similar to those of the belligerent's own soldiers."
"In Zilten,a camp run exclusively for native South Africans and Indians,Italian guards beat POW's,stabbed them with bayonets and even threatened to shoot them."(89)
Sounds like everybody broke the rules when it came to POWS.But not everywhere.

[michael mills]

Unfortunately, the source you linked is behind a paywall, so it is inaccessible. Perhaps you could tell us what claims it makes about Rommel.

[CogCalgary]

"Even the Germans were surprised by the PAI's violence:the Reich's consul general,who witnessed some of their operations personally,spoke of their"rather crude methods".65
For counterinsurgency, the PAI even built up a special secret service branch,the Officio speciale di istruzione di Polizia,which relied heavily on informants and agents.
Of course,the Germans were aware of Italian reprisals behind the front lines.Yet,perhaps surpringly,they seem to have exercised little control over events.The German consul general in Tripoli consulted with Italian state and party officials about possible countermeasures against the natives,but this was the full extent of German involvement.
Rommel did not directly intervene,though he advised the Italian authorities to do whatever was necessary to eliminate the danger of riots and espionage;for the German general,the rear areas were to be kept "quiet at all costs.66Thus,although he had no direct hand in the atrocities,Rommel made himself complicit in war crimes by failing to point out that international laws of war strictly prohibited certain forms of retaliation.67By giving carte blanche to the Italians,Rommel implicitly condoned,and perhaps even encouraged,their war crimes."

[CogCalgary]

Unfortunately, the source you linked is behind a paywall, so it is inaccessible. Perhaps you could tell us what claims it makes about Rommel.

Register with Academia and download whichever app you need for your platform.

[Urmel]

I am exchanging information with Prof. Bernhard, and he is a serious researcher of a matter that is too often glossed over for the benefit of the 'clean war in the desert' fairy tale.The reference for this article is: doi:10.1093/hgs/dcs054 Holocaust and Genocide Studies 26, no. 3 (Winter 2012): 425---446

[wm]

Page 435
"It is not surprising,therefore,that the Italian military administration set up a camp system for Allied POW's that reflected the "racial hierarchy"propagated by the Fascist regime.Soldiers of color were systematically discriminated against.The military interned non-whites in separate camps that lacked adequate facilities and provided them with lesser rations than it did others."

Although segregation wasn't forbidden by the Convention.
"Lesser rations" is somewhat meaningless; the Convention stated the rations needed to be "to that of the depot troops."

Similarly, stabbing, threatening to shoot, may have been legitime or not, depending on circumstances.
The guards had the right to use force or even deadly force to maintain order.

[CogCalgary]

I mistakenly posted this in the Mufti thread.

"Perhaps the fear of what might have been is the most searing legacy of the German occupation.Tunis was rife with rumors, for example,that Djebel Djeloud,a hill outside the capital city,was the site where the Germans secretly started to build a crematorium.German archives make no reference to this,but given the few SS files for Tunisia that have ever been found,this is no surprise."86
Pg 55,Among the Righteous.
So what was it that caused the local population to fear this?No buildings on this site.

[wm]

Although nothing wrong with crematoria either. They were useful in wars when frequently more died from diseases than from real fighting.

Crematoria had actually little to do with the Holocaust. Most Jews never saw any crematorium.
Only two of the six death camps had them, and even there, they were only partially used.