Dobbiaco
The Bolzano Transit Camp: a sad page in history
The Bolzano Transit Camp, also known as Dulag Bozen or Polizei-und Durchgangslager Bozen, was a Nazi concentration camp in Bolzano that was active from 1944 until the end of World War II. Previously, from 1942, there was a fascist Lager for Allied prisoners of war.
The history of the Bolzano Transit Camp
After the Armistice of Cassibile, Bolzano became the capital of the Prealpi operational zone and therefore under the control of the Heer (Wehrmacht). The Bolzano Transit Camp opened in the summer of 1944, in old Italian military engineering warehouses.
During its approximately ten months of activity, between 9,000 and 9,500 people passed through its walls, mostly political opponents. However, among the deportees present in the camp there were also Jews, South Tyroleans of the Wehrmacht or their families, Roma and Sinti, and Jehovah's Witnesses.
After being arrested by the forces of the collaborationist regime of the Italian Social Republic, the prisoners were handed over to the SS and taken to the Bolzano Transit Camp. Some of them were transferred to the Reich extermination camps, while others were used as slave workers in the nearby industrial zone.
The killing of 23 Italians and the outcomes of the camp
During the camp's history, 23 Italians were captured, interned and later slaughtered in the massacre at the Mignone barracks on September 12, 1944. In total, about 48 killings have been documented in the camp, although there could have been up to 300.
As the Allies advanced, the prisoners were released in stages between April 29 and May 3, 1945, when the Bolzano Transit Camp was finally dismantled. Today, on the site of the former concentration camp, there is a memorial called the "Passage der Erinnerung".
Conclusions
Remembering the Bolzano Transit Camp is important to not forget this dark page in history and to ensure that the atrocities committed there will never happen again. The camp is a symbolic place of human barbarity, oppression and the brutality of Nazism.
