Ferramonti di Tarsia, located near Cosenza in Southern Italy, was an internment camp for Jews and foreigners. It was the largest of the fifteen internment camps established by Benito Mussolini between June and September 1940. Over 3,800 Jews were imprisoned at the camp.
The construction of Ferramonti began on June 4, 1940, less than a week before Italy entered World War II. The arrest of Jewish citizens began on June 15, and prisoners began arriving at the camp on June 20. Between June, 1940, and August, 1943, there were 3,823 Jewish internees at Ferramonti, of which only 141 were Italian. The majority, 3,682 people, were foreign-born.
The camp was never a concentration camp in the German sense of the term. Internees were allowed to receive food parcels and visit sick relatives. In addition, there were no mail restrictions. None of the internees were killed or subjected to violence. In fact, the internees were constantly protected from deportation to Germany, as the Nazis requested. The main protagonists of this unique example of human solidarity and tolerance were the director of the camp, Paolo Salvatore, and the Capuchin monk, Fra Callisto Lopinot. Prisoners were allowed to organize a nursery, library, school, theater and synagogue. Several couples got married at the camp and 21 children were born. Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici was the spiritual advisor to the Jewish inmates from 1942 to 1943.
Six weeks after Mussolini's downfall (September, 1943), the prisoners were released. Many of these internees joined the Allied armed forces. About 1,000 of the refugees were shipped to the United States and interned at Camp Oswego, New York. Ultimately, they were released and were permitted to stay in the United States.
History and Memory of the Italian Concentration Camps, written by James Walston, article in The Historical Journal, Vol. 40, No. 1 (Mar., 1997), published by Cambridge University Press, pp. 169-183, 15 pages.
Ferramonti di Tarsia, written by Mario Rende, 2009, published by Mursia Editore, Italy