Campo di Concentramento e Transito di Fòssoli

The Campo di Concentramento e Transito di Fòssoli (Fòssoli Concentration and Transit Camp) outside of Carpi is the remains of an internment and transit camp operated by Italian Social Republic and German occupation authorities from 1943-45. Constructed by the Italian Army as a prisoner-of-war facility in 1942, the site changed hands following the German occupation of Northern Italy and was first employed as a concentration camp for Italian Jews in December 1943. Beginning in March 1944, it also served as an internment and transit camp and was integrated into the Holocaust: approximately 5000 political and racial internees were deported from Fòssoli to numerous final camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau, Mauthausen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Flossenburg and Ravensbrück.

Following the end of the war in Italy, the site was employed as a refugee camp until 1947 and was afterwards neglected. With the inauguration of Carpi’s Museo Monumento al Deportato Politico e Razziale (Museum of Political and Racial Deportation) in 1973, interest in preservation of the camp itself grew; the land was acquired by the municipality in 1984. The camp buildings are preserved in their current condition, and museum staff facilitate guided tours of the site.