Many Italian Jews from the northern Italian"Venezia Giulia" region were sent -during the first years of WW2- to the internment camp of Campagna, a small city in southern Italy. These Jews (some were from Trieste and Istria-Dalmatia, but many others were not Italian-born) in 1943 survived the "Holocaust" in this internment camp, where they were helped by some inhabitants of this ancient southern Italian town. One of those who gave most help to them in those terrible last months of 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies (who landed on September 9, 1943 on the beaches of Salerno, a few dozen kilometers from Campagna), was the mayor of Campagna - Carlino D'Ambrosio (uncle of my father).
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| In August 1940 was done this photo showing the Italian Jew Bruno Pincherle (a doctor from Trieste forced to stay in the internment camp of Campagna) wearing glasses in the center of the photo, surrounded by local friends of this little city. |
Photo of the caserma San Bartolomeo (a former late XIV century convent), that was used as internment camp in Campagna
Among the camps established by the fascist regime in June 1940 in existing buildings destined to welcome foreign Jews, the largest was that of Campagna; in the first months after it entered service it already hosted 430 men captured in different parts of Italy, including some English and French and a group of 40 Italian Jews (many from Trieste/Fiume and Istria/Dalmatia). However, the latter were all transferred to other camps after a few months. In November 1940 the number of foreign Jews had fallen to 230, in February 1941 to 170, to reach the lowest level in April 1942, with only 112 men. By November their number had risen to 170, and in the last months before the liberation by the Allies, which occurred in September 1943, it was around 160. About two thirds came from Germany and Austria, the rest were mainly Polish, Czechs or Jews of Fiume (actual Rijeka) who become "stateless". It is noteworthy to pinpoint that in those 3 years there were no deaths of Jews in the Campagna internment camp.
On June 16, 1940 the first internees arrived in Campagna, which were also received by Carlino D'Ambrosio (mayor of Campagna, then called Podesta') and by the Bishop of Campagna, Giuseppe Maria Palatucci. The were interned in two ex-convents: the Caserma San Bartolomeo and the Caserma Immaculate Conception.
Bruno Pincherle, a doctor from Trieste, was one of the first Jews interned in Campagna and remembered in a book (read https://books.google.com/books?id=j67hCBV1yNsC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=ebrei+triestini+nel+campo+internamento+di+Campagna&source=bl&ots=mk3arbHBMa&sig=ACfU3U2VY8ReHzauOcYHMWMVsFDUx_kyMg&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxisu9gvjnAhVoTd8KHVpGAy0Q6AEwEXoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=ebrei%20triestini%20nel%20campo%20internamento%20di%20Campagna&f=false how well he was treated by the local population. Pincherle was one of the Jewish doctors who began to cure the inhabitants of the place, although it was prohibited by Fascism. And he even used to have lunch at his friends' house in Campagna! Moreover, almost the whole town contributed to helping and protecting the internees. This attitude of the inhabitants of Campagna towards the interned Jews caused the then secretary of the National Fascist Party, Adelchi Serena, to write a letter to the local police chief in the autumn of 1941, in which he complained about the "too much freedom in which the Jews interned were living at the Campaign concentration camp, and demanded consequent measures by the regime's police forces".
And the doctor Bruno Pincherle used to add that in the "Principate of Salerno" (where Campagna was located) the Jews were well-liked and accepted since the Middle Ages and the Longobards centuries.
The Italian government gave the following official "Gold Medal" award to Campagna's citizens (in September 2006 ):
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Medaglia d'oro al Merito Civile |
| «La popolazione di Campagna, sfidando i divieti e le minacce di punizione e rappresaglie e dando testimonianza di elevati sentimenti di solidarietà e fratellanza umana, si adoperò per alleviare le sofferenze, dare ospitalità e, talvolta, favorire la fuga degli ebrei internati nel campo di concentramento ubicato in quel Comune. Mirabile esempio di eccezionale abnegazione ed elette virtù civili. 1940 - 1943» — 1940 - 1943 Campagna |
Let me now remind you of "uncle Carlino", my father's uncle who became mayor of the town of Campagna. I consider him the member of my family who reached the highest levels, being mentioned in many books (and circles) for his help to the Jews in September 1943. I remember him -when I was a high school student and personally knew him in the 1960s - like a very affable and polite old man. He spoke little, but I immediately noticed his ability to be appreciated socially, being accepted by friends as group leader without reservations (as by all of us, his relatives). A quality that was typical of a born politician.
My father always told me that Uncle Carlino had the same qualities of "forming a group and leading him" as Uncle Mimino (my father's brother who was the soul and the engine of the best football team in Venezuela in the sixties and seventies: the "Deportivo Italia").
In fact writers like Gianluca Petroni and Adolfo Ricci remember him in the following passages of their books on Jews interned in Campagna during the Second World War:
".....I arrived in the courtyard of the "Olindo Guerrieri" boarding school in Campagna where I was immediately welcomed and accompanied, with the related equipment, to the place assigned to me, and helped by a couple of bold young men who expressed themselves in a language unknown to me. But it wasn't long before I got to know the story of those young people, and their other friends present there, almost all graduates or university students: I saw them in the evening in the refectory when, wearing a white coat, they began to serve us with the non-lavish dinner ... And so I came to know that those young people, the most adult of whom was called Abraham, were Jews and had been "settled" in that college with the function of table attendants and not only, because they were also employed in the various tasks that required the dormitories and others outbuildings of the building. Later I understood that those young Jews were there, among the collegiate of Campagna, to escape the racial laws promulgated by Fascism and with the full approval and consent of the owner of the college, as well as Podesta 'di Campagna, Mr. Carlino D’Ambrosio, and of other political authorities and religious eminences of the place, since the boarding school was officially directed by an excellent priest - Mons. Alberto Gibboni - part of the Curia and parish priest of the cathedral ... "
".....The internees (in the Campagna internment camp) were able to receive visits and enjoy assistance, in food, clothing and money, offered to them by DELASEM. (Delasem, the
Italian Jewish refugee agency, worked to help provide food, clothes and money
to supplement the official government allowance of Lire 6.50 per day) ….Among the prisoners there were many Jewish doctors who began to treat the locals, despite being prohibited by Fascism. Among the various inmates, the Russian painter Alessandro Degai was also imprisoned, who painted several works, giving them to various citizens. All the prisoners were free to move through the streets and houses of the town ( The internees had permission to move around the town of Campagna daily for six hours). Local police, led by police commissioner Eugenio de Paoli and supported by 30 Carabinieri (police officers of a lower rank), maintained camp surveillance. The relationship between the internees in Campagna camp and the local population was good – sometimes too good, as they were welcomed by the Campagnesi as friends. Friendship ties were created and so many inmates dined at the home of local friends. This also involved the mayor Carlino D'Ambrosio and the local fascist authorities who kept the activities hidden from the higher authorities...…. An essential role had the bishop of Campagna, Giuseppe Maria Palatucci and his nephew Giovanni Palatucci, Quaestor of Fiume, who by sending as many Istrian Jews as possible to the Camp, saved hundreds of them from the extermination camps. .... To alleviate their detention, a library was set up, a football team that periodically played with external teams, a small theater and an internship bulletin. A small synagogue was also set up in the barracks of San Bartolomeo and, for a period, at the invitation of the bishop, an interned pianist (Bogdan Zins, an internationally famous polish pianist) played the organ in the main church during Sunday mass. On September 8, 1943, when the allied troops arrived in the southerners, fascists and German troops placed near Campagna, in an attempt to make reprisals, went to the former barracks to execute the detainees. Once on the spot they found no one, as previously informed by the inhabitants, the internees were made to flee into the mountains. ...."
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| Photo of the Jews interned in the S.Bartolomeo caserma in summer 1941, surrounded by friendly Italian carabinieri (What a difference with photos of Jews interned in Nazi camps in Germany!) |
And now allow me to add something that is not mentioned in the texts that I have read: Uncle Carlino - according to what his brother (my grandfather Luigi) told me - ordered all the fascist soldiers and policemen stationed in Campagna on the night of September 8 ( when Italy surrendered) to stay locked in their barracks. At the same time he (risking his life for this decision) ordered one of his trusted attendants to leave all the doors of the cells of the Jewish detainees in the Campagna internment camp open, so that they would flee -without any obstacle- to the mountains around Campagna before the German Nazis arrived (who would immediately send them to the camps of extermination in Germany). In this way all 160 Jews locked up in Campagna were saved.
Uncle Carlino was offered an official recognition (as a "Righteous") after the war by Jews residing in Israel (some of them had survived thanks to him) but nothing was done because he had joined the Fascist Party (the one and only in my family) and the Israeli authorities did not allow this kind of honorific to a member of this Party.
May Carlino D'Ambrosio rest in peace. For me and my family he is a "Righteous" and deserves all eternal respect.
