Italy’s Forgotten Camp: The Risiera di San Sabba

The Servola neighbourhood of Trieste, Italy, is quiet now. It was once a sprawling industrial centre, and trains still move cargo to and from the nearby docks on the Adriatic Sea. It is far removed from the busy tourist centre where the cruise lines release their patrons. It is also home to the Risiera di San Sabba, the only Nazi concentration camp in Italy with a crematorium. I had never heard of the Risiera. Neither school nor documentaries highlighted its role in the Nazi's Final Solution, but to Italians, it is a horrible black mark on their national history.

The Risiera was originally a rice mill built during World War I. When the Nazis occupied Trieste, they converted the mill into a prison camp. The camp's primary purpose wasn't extermination like Dachau or Auschwitz; it was primarily a transport camp. Its small size meant it couldn't hold thousands of prisoners long term, the Nazis' policy of overcrowding notwithstanding. Prisoners from the front were moved to the Risiera, interrogated, and transported elsewhere for their wartime internment. Not all of them made it, however, as prisoners who died under torture or who were deemed undesirable to Nazi authorities were cremated on site. When the Allies invaded Italy, the Nazis retreated, destroying the crematorium and other parts of the Risiera in the process. Like the death camps, there could be no evidence of their crimes for Allies to find.

Entering the Risiera, Jo, Layne, and I walked through a tall, concrete walkway, the kind used by transport trucks shipping goods in and out of the camp. The walkway led to a central courtyard, enclosed on all sides by walls and buildings. Today, the Risiera is only about a fourth of the original size, the neighbourhood having grown up around it in the aftermath of the war, but the wide-open courtyard enclosed by walls still gave a sense of how large the camp once was. Had I not known it was a prison camp, I would have assumed it was just an abandoned industrial building. The red brick buildings looked just like the early-1900s mills in the Northeastern United States, and it wasn't hard to envision some logistician coordinating shipments of steel, linen, or anything else in and out of the courtyard.

The buildings' insides told a different story. Most of them were closed to visitors as part of the preservation process. Still, the torture cell, often the last stop before the execution squad, remained open, dark without windows to the outside. The adjacent prison cells, where prisoners under interrogation, had more light, but the narrow cells' individual doors still shut prisoners in mostly darkness. There weren't many, this camp being a tranport camp more than anything else, but that didn't excuse the atrocities that occurred there. The barracks still stood as well. The architect for the national monument had the floors and walls on the upper floors removed, so only the crossbeams remained, giving visitors an idea of how crammed the thousands of prisoners who lived there would have been.

Where the crematorium once stood was a reflective metal plate. The debris from the destroyed parts of the camp had been removed when the Allies took control so that they could turn the Risiera into a refugee camp for displaced families and soldiers. At the end of the plate was a tall, black spire, symbolising the smokestack. Today, the smokestack is in the corner of the camp, but when the camp was active, it would have been almost directly in the centre. For a camp that downplayed its role in summary exterminations, it sure placed the smokestack in a prominent place for all to see.

Standing in the courtyard, I never would have known that there was a mechanic's shop next door. The imposing walls created a silent atmosphere, and even the quietest sound echoed between them. The silence was both reverent and disquieting. It was right that we paid solemn respect to those who were murdered at the camp and during the Holocaust writ-large, but that respect also seemed to come more out of an obligation than serious concern for the victims, survivors, and implications for history. It wasn't lost on me that places like the Risiera stood as a reminder that "Never Again" would the world standby and watch such horrors happen while they were actively happening all over. I accepted that these camps were memorials to their victims and not places to make political points or protest, but the fact that this was a national Italian monument while Italy failed to act directly against China's genocide against the Uyghurs or the ethnic conflicts on the African continent didn't sit right with me. "Never Again" meant something to me, but I have always been in the minority.

Nonetheless, walking out of the Risiera, I thought that everyone that visits Trieste should visit the monument. It is an important piece of Italian and world history, and the fact that it is off the beaten path shouldn't be a deterrent—it is the whole point. We should go out of our way to remember the atrocities of the past, both as a tribute to the memory of the victims and as a declaration of our cultural values. Too many tourists flooding the city from their comfortable cruise ships saw this place as inconvenient to visit, opting instead for the ocean-side wine, Barcola beach, and fancy shops. This same inconvenience was driving government and social apathy towards genocides in the world today.

I left concerned that man's inhumanity to man during the Holocaust would ultimately be forgotten. It was almost a hundred years before, and the world was moving on as the last of America's Greatest Generation passed away. As they passed, so did our willingness to stand up for what is right on the international stage. Sure, standing up against genocides came at great cost, but what was worse: to pay the price or to be a bystander?

I know what the victims of the Holocaust would think. So would the families of 3,000 victims in the Risiera.