Risiera di San Sabba was a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, located in Trieste

Trieste

Trieste is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is situated towards the end of a narrow strip of land lying between the Adriatic Sea and Italy's border with Slovenia, which lies almost immediately south and east of the city...

, northern Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

. SS members Odilo Globocnik

Odilo Globocnik

Odilo Lotario Globocnik was a prominent Austrian Nazi and later an SS leader. He was an acquaintance of Adolf Eichmann, who played a major role in the extermination of Jews and others during the Holocaust...

 and Karl Frenzel

Karl Frenzel

SS-Oberscharführer Karl August Wilhelm Frenzel was the commandant of Sobibor extermination camp's Lager I section, which was the section for the Sonderkommando forced-labor prisoner-workers, who also herded victims into the gas chambers...

, and Ivan Marchenko are all said to have participated in the killings at this camp. Erwin Lambert

Erwin Lambert

Erwin Hermann Lambert was a perpetrator of the Holocaust. In profession, he was a master mason, building trades foreman, Nazi Party member and member of the Schutzstaffel with the rank of SS-Unterscharführer...

 is claimed to have installed cremation facilities. Today the former concentration camp is dedicated as a civic museum.

Background

The edifice was built in 1913 and first used as a rice-husking facility (hence the name "Risiera"). During World War II Nazi occupation forces in Trieste used the building to transport, detain and exterminate prisoners. Many occupants of Risiera di San Sabba were transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

. Historians estimate that over 3,000 people were killed at the camp and thousands more imprisoned and transported elsewhere. The majority of prisoners came from Friuli

Friuli

Friuli is an area of northeastern Italy with its own particular cultural and historical identity. It comprises the major part of the autonomous region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, i.e. the province of Udine, Pordenone, Gorizia, excluding Trieste...

, the Julian March

Julian March

The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...

, and the Province of Ljubljana

Province of Ljubljana

The Province of Ljubljana was a province of the Kingdom of Italy and of the Nazi German Adriatic Littoral during World War II. It was created on May 3, 1941 from territory occupied and annexed to Italy after the Axis invasion and dissolution of Yugoslavia, and it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when...

.

After the war, the camp served as a refugee center and transit point. In the 1950's, many people, especially ethnic Italians fleeing then communist Yugoslavia, passed through the camp. Celebrity chef and restauranteur Lidia Matticchio Bastianich

Lidia Bastianich

Lidia Matticchio Bastianich is an American chef, author, and restaurateur....

spent two years in the camp with her parents and brother before receiving visas to America.

External links

• Risiera di San Sabba (in Italian but with links to a downloadable English PDF file
• 27 gennaio 2010 "Giorno della Memoria" a Trieste presso la Scuola Agenti di Polizia, Carcere Coroneo e Risiera di San Sabba