| Bolzano Transit Camp | |
|---|---|
| Transit Camp | |
 Bolzano in 1945 | |
  Location of Bolzano Transit Camp within Northern Italy | |
 Interactive map of Bolzano Transit Camp | |
| Other names | German:Polizei- und Durchgangslager Bozen |
| Location | Bolzano,Operationszone Alpenvorland |
| Operated by | SS |
| Commandant | Wilhelm HarsterKarl Friedrich Titho |
| Operational | summer 1944–3 May 1945 |
| Inmates | Mostly political prisoners, alsoItalian Jews andRomani people |
| Number of inmates | 11,000 |
Bolzano was atransit camp operated byNazi Germany inBolzano from 1944 to 3 May 1945 duringWorld War II. It was one of the largest NaziLager on Italian soil, along with those ofFossoli,Borgo San Dalmazzo andTrieste.
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After theAllies signed theArmistice with Italy on September 8, 1943, Bolzano became the headquarters of thePrealpine Operations Zone and came under the control of theNazi army. When the internment camp in Fossoli became vulnerable to Allied attack, it was dismantled, and a transit camp for prisoners headed forMauthausen,Flossenbürg,Dachau,Ravensbrück andAuschwitz was set up in Bolzano.
Operational from the summer of 1944 and located in buildings previously occupied by theItalian Army, the transit camp hosted about 11,000 prisoners from middle and northern Italy in its ten months of activity. Although the camp's population consisted mostly ofpolitical opponents,Jewish[1] andRomani people (i.e., gypsy) deportees also passed through its barracks. A portion of the prisoners—approximately 3,500 people of all ages—was transferred to one of theLagers[clarification needed], while the rest were assigned to workin loco as free labor, either in the camp workshops and labs, in local firms, or in the apple orchards.
The interned prisoners were freed between April 29 and May 3, 1945,[2] when the camp was closed to prevent the advancing Allied troops from witnessing its living conditions and (presumably) to eliminate evidence. TheSS troops destroyed all documentation relating to camp activities before withdrawing, following the standing order that no trace be left behind.
The camp was originally set to host 1,500 people. For this purpose, two sheds were divided into six blocks, one of which was reserved for women. The camp was then progressively enlarged until it reached a stated capacity of 4,000 prisoners.
As was customary in Nazi internment camps, each block was assigned a letter and a specific "type" of prisoner. In block A lived permanent residents, who were treated somewhat better than the others because of their involvement in essential camp activities (especially administration); in blocks D and E were kept political prisoners, regarded by the Nazis as the greatest danger and therefore kept segregated from other prisoners; block F was reserved for women and the occasional child.
Jewish male deportees, whose transit was often short-lived, were crammed in block L. There was also aprison block hosting approximately 50 inmates.
The camp was directed by theVerona SS, whose chief was theBrigadeführer (brigade general) ofGestapoWilhelm Harster; the camp's executive directors wereUntersturmführerKarl Friedrich Titho andHauptscharführer Haage, who headed agarrison of German, Swiss and Ukrainian soldiers.
Bolzano camp was the only one, in Italy, to have attached forced-labour camps (Außenlager). Of these, the most important ones were inMerano,Schnals,Sarntal,Moos in Passeier andSterzing.
As in most camps where political prisoners abounded, aresistance movement arose, organized along three axes:
In January 1946, an American military court sentenced SS officersHeinrich Andergassen, August Schiffer, and Albert Storz to death by hanging for the murders of five American POWs, includingOSS agentRoderick Stephen Hall, and two British POWs. A fourth man,Gendarmeriewachtmeister Hans Butz, was sentenced to life in prison specifically for his involvement in the murder of Hall. Andergassen, Schiffer, and Storz were executed at an American military stockade inLivorno on 26 July 1946.
In November 2000, the military court ofVerona sentencedMichael Seifert, a Ukrainian SS known in the camp as "Misha", to life in prison in absentia for the atrocities he committed against deportees, particularly those held in the jail block.
The relative recency of this trial is because the case had remained hidden for decades and resurfaced with the discovery of the so-calledarmadio della vergogna (lit., "cabinet of shame") in 1994. Among the prisoners that Seifert and his accomplice Otto Sein tortured was a youngMike Bongiorno, an AmericanPOW who would go on to become one of Italy's most beloved TV figures after war.
Seifert, who had emigrated toCanada after the war, had to face 18 counts ofmurder and 15 additional counts of misconduct. He was tracked down inVancouver, only days before the trial was to begin, by a reporter working for theVancouver Sun, who acted upon information provided by theAssociazione nazionale ex deportati politici nei campi nazisti (ANED) (National Association of former political deportees to Nazi internment camps). Seifert was extradited to Italy in 2008, where he died in prison in 2010.
His story was reconstructed by the Italian historiansGiorgio Mezzalira and Carlo Romeo in the book entitledMischa, jailer of the Bolzano lager.
A separate trial of the camp directors, Titho and Haage, had taken place in 1999, with a different outcome: Titho was absolved for lack of evidence,[3] while Haage was sentenced posthumously.[citation needed]
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