Transport from Siena, Siena, Toscana, Italy to Firenze, Firenze, Toscana, Italy on 06/11/1943

Wehrmacht troops entered Siena, the capital of the eponymous province, on September 13, 1943.^[1] At that time, the city was home to approximately 200 Jews.^[2] On October 8, after the Germans had established the Italian Social Republic (RSI), SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann ordered an SS detachment from the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office - RSHA), under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, to Italy. Dannecker was tasked with implementing the "Final Solution" in the German-occupied northern part of the country. He first targeted the Jewish community in Rome on October 16^[3], and then followed through with raids in several other Italian cities, among them Firenze,^[4] Montecatini-Terme, and Siena. To organize the transports more effectively and simultaneously, he divided his unit into smaller groups and single envoys, who travelled to the respective municipalities and arranged the deportations with the local Sipo and SD branches, together with the Italian authorities in charge.^[5]

Siena did not have an office of Sipo or SD forces.^[6] Since Dannecker was sick and stayed in Rome, his deputy, SS-Unterscharführer Alwin Eisenkolb, implemented the orders. Eisenkolb, being busy organizing the deportation of Jews from Firenze, sent one or two of his men to Siena. The identity of this/these SS envoy(s) is unknown. Alba Valech Capozzi, testifying in 1946 about her experiences as a deportee from Siena, mentions only one SS man in the raiding party, who might even have been an Italian SS-man.^[7] All the other guards were Italian Fascists, all or most of them from the paramilitary force Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale (Voluntary Militia for National Security – MVSN), better known as the Blackshirts, or Squadristi.^[8] When Alba's husband, having been surprised by the action, complained to the raiders, he was told: "Contact Prefect Chiurco, I can't do anything about it."^[9]

Giorgio Alberto Chiurco, an infamous Fascist "of the first hour" and faithful follower of Benito Mussolini, became the Prefect of Siena on October 28, 1943. He was a former university professor who, back in the late 1930s, had formulated general theses on "the health of the races in the Italian Empire," based on pseudo-scientific research.^[10] Dannecker's envoy probably arrived in Siena on November 3 or 4, to instruct the prefect. Chiurco was responsible for specifying the collection point and providing the necessary guards and the truck to deport the arrested Jews to Firenze. Like all prefects under the RSI government, he relied on the MVSN, which was the military arm of the Italian Fascist party (PNF),^[11] and on the local Gendarmerie force, the Carabinieri.^[12]...