Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Map 1. The Jews of Italy, 1938
- Map 2. Principal Centers of Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1938–1943
- Introduction
- Part One ITALIAN JEWRY FROM LIBERALISM TO FASCISM
- Part Two RISE OF RACIAL PERSECUTIONS
- Part Three CATASTROPHE – THE GERMAN OCCUPATION, 1943–1945
- 11 The Shoah in Italy: Its History and Characteristics
- 12 The Möllhausen Telegram, the Kappler Decodes, and the Deportation of the Jews of Rome: The New CIA-OSS Documents, 2000–2002
- 13 The Persecution of Jews in Two Regions of German-Occupied Northern Italy, 1943–1945: Operationszone Alpenvorland and Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland
- Map 3. Italy and the two German-controlled Operationszonen
- Map 4. The two Operationszonen in detail with provincial capitals.
- Part Four THE VATICAN AND THE HOLOCAUST IN ITALY
- Part Five AFTERMATH: CONTEMPORARY ITALY AND HOLOCAUST MEMORY
- Index
- Plates A–D
13 - The Persecution of Jews in Two Regions of German-Occupied Northern Italy, 1943–1945: Operationszone Alpenvorland and Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- List of Contributors
- Map 1. The Jews of Italy, 1938
- Map 2. Principal Centers of Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1938–1943
- Introduction
- Part One ITALIAN JEWRY FROM LIBERALISM TO FASCISM
- Part Two RISE OF RACIAL PERSECUTIONS
- Part Three CATASTROPHE – THE GERMAN OCCUPATION, 1943–1945
- 11 The Shoah in Italy: Its History and Characteristics
- 12 The Möllhausen Telegram, the Kappler Decodes, and the Deportation of the Jews of Rome: The New CIA-OSS Documents, 2000–2002
- 13 The Persecution of Jews in Two Regions of German-Occupied Northern Italy, 1943–1945: Operationszone Alpenvorland and Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland
- Map 3. Italy and the two German-controlled Operationszonen
- Map 4. The two Operationszonen in detail with provincial capitals.
- Part Four THE VATICAN AND THE HOLOCAUST IN ITALY
- Part Five AFTERMATH: CONTEMPORARY ITALY AND HOLOCAUST MEMORY
- Index
- Plates A–D
Summary
In January 1944, the Löwy family was captured in a small mountain village in Northern Italy, because they were Jews. Here are some excerpts from the letters Riccardo Löwy wrote to his friends, pleading for help:
The four of us have now been detained here for five weeks; our women are kept separate from us…. we urgently need food, of whatever kind. Please be so good and kind as to send us something to eat…. I appeal to our friendship and to your kind heart. We are utterly destitute without any fault of ours. We do not ask for much, even bread would be enough. Take pity on us, but please, please hurry!
And then again:
If you could send us a tomato to put on the bread we would be grateful. We protect ourselves from the cold by exercising. Please … could you lend me underpants and a shirt and a towel, all old ones, so that we can wash our things, although to tell the truth I don't know how we can do the laundry. Our miserable life is all centred on eating, and in this manner we somehow forget our future which perhaps will be even more distressing…. I don't know why God is punishing us so hard!
We do not know if Löwy's plea was answered in time. A month later the entire family was deported and perished in Auschwitz.
The Löwys had been captured in the province of Trento, in Northern Italy.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922–1945 , pp. 243 - 259Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005