Credits: Fabrizio Nocera
Where are we?
We are in Agnone
Between 1940 and 1943, there was a camp in this town chosen by Fascists to intern Roma and Sinti.
This camp was set up on 14th July 1940 in the former Convent of St Bernardine of Siena. It was one of five Italian camps set up in Molise for the detention of Jews (mainly German and Austrian), Roma, Sinti, and citizens of enemy nations, mostly British.
On 15th July 1941, 58 Roma and Sinti were transferred there, and from that moment on the camp became a ‘Gypsy Concentration Camp’. 100 people would later be sent there, men and women of Italian, Spanish, Croatian and French nationality. Although initially the prisoners’ living conditions were poor, with malnutrition and little freedom of movement, a Red Cross inspection in 1943 verified an improvement in sanitary conditions: there was a vegetable garden tended to by the Roma, hot water, and even a doctor.
The prisoners were released by the Carabinieri after the Armistice. Some joined the partisan forces; others were captured by the Germans and forced to dig anti-tank ditches and lay mines. At the end of the war, the camp became a Catholic boarding school, and since 1970 it has been a retirement home.
A plaque on the building placed in 2013 lists the names of the families who were imprisoned there. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of cultural understanding regarding the imprisonment and deportation of Roma and Sinti communities, events which have been forgotten and their memory obliterated.
USEFUL INFORMATION
Facility or museum: yes
Geographic location: Agnone, Molise
Photo gallery
To know more
