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bwood1946
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THE NAZI PERIOD IN ITALY
Giovanna Boursier
In Italy the victims of the fascist dictatorship also included the Roma. Today, whilst historical investigation of the subject is only just beginning and has to contend with over half a century of more or less deliberate neglect and “memory lapses”, we can say with certainty that the Roma were tracked down, put on file and imprisoned by the fascist government of the time. Those interned endured cold, hunger and disease which in some cases resulted in their deaths.
S
ITALIAN ROMA CAMPS OR CAMPS
WITH ROMA INTERNEES
Ill. 1 (based upon Boursier 1999, p. 24)
INTRODUCTION
In Italy research on the persecution and internment of the Roma remains very thin on the ground – especially academic research – and there has been little study of internment in a country, which is reluctant to acknowledge its complicity with the Nazis and consequently its shared responsibility for the policy of extermination.
For this same reason, there are many gaps in facts and figures on the fascist persecution of the Roma in Italy, and it is only now, thanks to the tenacity of a few historians and researchers, that this forgotten story is starting to be told. Unfortunately, figures on the number of victims are not yet known. Nor is it possible as yet to be clear on the reasons for the persecution. But we have to appreciate that even if the fascist persecution of the Roma cannot definitely be categorised as part of a racist policy on the part of the regime, aimed, like Hitler‘s, at actually exterminating the groups in question, the fact remains that the Roma were always discriminated against, singled out and persecuted as “zingari” (“Gypsies”). And that definitely means something.
THE RACE QUESTION
On October 28, 1922, the fascist Blackshirts marched on Rome and, the next day, King Victor-Emmanuel III asked Benito Mussolini to form a new government. This ushered in the period of fascist dictatorship, characterised by the elimination – including physical elimination – of all opposition groups and by a policy of imperialistic domination which also drew on racist theory and practice.
In 1938 fascism revealed the full violence and ugliness of its racist face, particularly against the Jews. The Race Manifesto was published in July, spelling out the “differences” between the human races in clear terms, and this was soon followed by the establishment of the Department for Demography and Race and the Race Tribunal. Then, in September, the racial laws against the Jews were approved, a clear reflection of the regime’s violently anti-Semitic policy.
In terms of the law, at least, the Roma do not seem to have been included in the regime’s racial policies. For that reason it has always been denied that they were racially discriminated against in Italy. But they were, right from the outset, targeted by policies on law and order. Italy too had a “Gypsy problem” which, as we shall see, took shape from 1926 onwards and became increasingly prominent after the outbreak of war.
In any event, in recent years the archives have displayed much of the theorising on the supposed “Gypsy threat” of the time, including the ideas of leading architects of fascist racial policy, like Guido Landra, head of the Office of Racial Studies at the Ministry of Popular Culture. Landra, like others before and after him, made the issue an unequivocally racial one, not least by reference to appraisals of the physical and moral attributes of the “Gypsy race”. [Ill. 5]
Ill. 2 (Detail)
The ministerial internment order of September 11, 1940:
”… due to the fact that they sometimes commit serious crimes because of their innate nature and methods of organisation and due to the possibility that among them there are elements capable of carrying out anti-national activities, it is indispensable that all Gypsies are controlled … It is ordered that those of Italian nationality, either confirmed or presumed, who are still in circulation are to be rounded up as quickly as possible and concentrated under vigorous surveillance in a suitable locality in every province … apart from the more dangerous or suspicious elements who are to be sent to the islands or regions…”
(excerpted from Boursier 1999, p. 18)
TYPES OF INTERNMENT
Roma prisoners were of course subject to the general rules of internment in Italy, which consisted of two types of procedures: internment in “concentration camps” and compulsory residence in a designated locality (they had to stay within that locality and were not allowed to leave it). The two types of internment were practised almost exclusively in remote areas and small villages, in harsh living conditions where prisoners were subject to an endless number of strict and often cruel rules for their control and supervision. The Ministry of Interior ordered that the camps were to be established in derelict or rarely used buildings, far from strategically important centres and wherever possible in remote areas. Most of the camps were in the regions of central Italy, particularly in the central Apennine valley and the Abruzzi.
Ill. 3
FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE
Most of those who have studied the question of the fascist persecution of the Roma have not yet drawn on arch
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