By Vincenzina Spadafora Grasso, La Nostra Voce
Growing up in Southern Italy during World War II, all of us children were kept in the dark about the horrors taking place near and far. Constant hunger, pestilent diseases and bombing raids were enough hardships for us to endure. It was June 10, 1940, when it all began. A huge crowd of somber townspeople gathered next door to our home. A wealthy landowner resided in a palazzo (a palace), and he always placed a blaring radio on his balcony when important news was broadcasted. That fateful day it was Benito Mussolini, who declared the tragic news that Italy was joining with Germany against the Allies. By the end of his lengthy speech, I saw many women weep, including my mother. When I asked why she was crying, she delivered a curt answer, “We did not like what we heard!”
This article first appeared in the April 2024 edition of ISDA’s monthly Italian American newspaper, La Nostra Voce. Subscribe here
It was years later, after we had emigrated to Pennsylvania, when I learned about all the heinous crimes against humanity that had taken place. I was in Sharon High School when we studied about the concentration camps in Germany and Eastern Europe. My teacher, a WWII veteran, often would ask me to share my fresh memories with my classmates (I often wondered if they understood what I was saying with my fractured English). It was only when I read “Under the Southern Sun,” written by Paul Paolicelli, that I discovered the existence of the Ferramonti Concentration Camp in Tarsia. Much to my surprise, it was located just 10 miles north of the city of Cosenza, Calabria (in Rogliano, my hometown, we were 10 miles south of Cosenza). Ferramonti was the largest of 15 camps installed by Mussolini in June 1940. Soon after, the arrest of Jews and political dissidents began. More than 3,800 Jewish internees arrived, of which only 141 were Italian-born Jews. Ferramonti was never a concentration camp, at least not in the German sense of the term. The internees were allowed to receive a parcel of food and visit sick relatives; and they were allowed to send and receive mail. Only four of the internees were ever killed; a small group went shopping in Cosenza and died during an air bombardment by the Allies. Also, the internees were always protected from deportation to Germany as the Nazis requested. The main reason for this unique example of human solidarity were the directors: Paolo Salvatore and Capuchin Fraire Callisto Lapinot (a priest sent by the Vatican to look after the Jewish people). The internees were allowed to organize a nursery, library, school, theatre and synagogues. Several couples were married at the camp and 21 children were born.
Most of the internees were physicians, dentists, university professors, rabbis, and many were skilled professionals. They all had fled to Italy to escape the Nazis. When the people nearby learned about their talented neighbors, locals began sneaking into the camp at night to visit the “prison healers,” who were tapped to provide medical or therapeutic services. At least three stills were set up to help the internees keep warm in cold and inclement weather. Internees often ran errands in Cosenza without guards accompanying them.
Ferramonti, Tarsia.
Storia deve rimanere viva, errori del passato monito per presente e futuro #giornatadellamemoria pic.twitter.com/PtFPziNMMs— Mario Oliverio (@Oliverio_MarioG) January 27, 2015
One summer evening, the camp’s marshal, Gaetano Marrari, and his wife drove a truck into the camp and gathered up dozens of children. At this point, the internees were aware of the mass murder of Jews in Poland and Eastern Europe. Rumors ran through the camp that the children were shipped north. Desperate parents were in tears. A few hours later, however, the children returned happy, safe and sound. The marshal had taken them to Cosenza for gelato.
In the fall of 1943, as the Nazis began their retreat from Italy, a German general stopped by the camp to see what was being done to evacuate the internees. Now, for the first time, the prisoners were in grave danger. A local priest, who learned of their impending doom, scurried over the camp’s main gate, hurriedly took down the Italian flag and replaced it with a hastily made quarantine pennant. When the German general and his entourage arrived, the priest met them at the front gate and humbly explained that they were more than welcome to enter the camp; however, he said, a severe outbreak of cholera could imperil the officers. The general and his peers made a quick about-face and continued north without looking back. In September 1943, the Allies liberated Ferramonti. Many internees joined the Allied armed forces. About 1,000 were sent to the United States and were interned at Camp Oswego in New York. Ultimately, they were permitted to stay.
Today, the German concentration camps, such as Dachau, near Munich, and Auschwitz, are tourist meccas that remind the public of the horrors that took place more than 84 years ago. Meanwhile, in Calabria, the Ferramonti Memorial Museum was built to commemorate the camp’s existence. Very few people know about it, yet it stands as a stoic and ironic monument to humanity in southern Italy, amid the madness of war. Ferramonti became a place of survival for almost 4,000 internees. After the Italian Armistice, in 1943, the Italian concentration camps, under German control, were scattered across Italy and became transit centers to death camps in Germany. The prisoners of Ferramonti were most fortunate to be placed there since it turned out to be a concentration camp unlike any other. As children, we never heard of this neighborhood camp, located among the Apennine Mountains in Calabria. We children couldn’t see our secret neighbors, but we always felt a flourish of hope staring at the distant peaks that were dusted with snow in the autumns.
P.S. — As I was finishing this article, my son, Joe, came to visit me. Automatically, I started to read my story, just like I did for my late husband, Sebastiano. It was he, prior to his passing, who encouraged me to keep writing and sharing my memories
