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Italy's Holocaust Executioners Revealed
(Times of Israel) Matt Lebovic - Thousands of Italian civilians helped the Nazis murder Italian Jews during the Holocaust, according to the recently translated 2015 Italian book The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews of Italy, by Simon Levis Sullam. Italy introduced anti-Jewish racial laws in 1938, two years before entering the war on Hitler's side. Jews were dismissed from their jobs, kicked out of schools, and denounced in the media. As in Germany and the Netherlands, meticulously kept records helped identify the country's 46,000 Jews. The chapter "Hunting Down Jews in Florence" recounts that on the night of November 16, 1943, Italian Fascists, including members of the notorious Carita gang, "took part in the raid on the Franciscan convent in the Piazza del Carmine where numerous Jewish women and their children had taken refuge. They were held prisoner in the convent for four days before being transferred to Verona by truck...and deported from there to Auschwitz." By the end of the Holocaust, 6,746 Jews were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau where nearly all of them were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival. An additional 303 Jews were killed in massacres committed on Italian soil. Half of Italy's murdered Jews were arrested by Italians, as opposed to Germans. At the same time, more than 400 Italians who helped rescue Jews have been recognized by Israel's Yad Vashem.