Transport from Roma, Roma, Lazio, Italy to Auschwitz Birkenau, Extermination Camp, Poland on 18/10/1943

The Wehrmacht entered Rome on September 10, 1943.^[1] At that time, the Italian capital had a Jewish population of about 12,000,^[2] constituting one-fifth of all Jews in Italy and 1.1% of the city's total population. SS-Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler^[3] became the Kommandeur der SiPo und des SD (KdS, Commander of the Security Police and Security Service)^[4] – that is, chief of all SS and police forces deployed in Rome.^[5] Between September 18-19, the office of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler radioed a precise get-ready order to Kappler: “The recent Italian events impose a final solution to the Jewish question in the territories recently occupied by the armed forces of the Reich. The Reichsführer therefore requests (…) to take without delay all necessary preliminary measures [against the Jews], in order to ensure the swiftness and secrecy of the operations to be carried out in the territory of the city of Rome. Immediate further orders will follow.”^[6] As the SS did not trust the Italian police, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) for Italy, SS-Gruppenführer Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff, put 100 SS men at Kappler's immediate disposal.^[7]

The next orders came on September 24. Himmler personally instructed Kappler in a secret telegram that "all Jews, without distinction of nationality, age, sex, and condition, must be transferred to Germany and liquidated there. The success of the undertaking must be ensured by surprise action."^[8] That same day, thousands of Italian and refugee Jews were rounded up all over Nazi-occupied Italy (including in Rome), blamed for having "engineered Italy's capitulation", and thrown into jail.^[9] On September 26, Kappler levied a ransom on local Jews, demanding 50 kilograms of gold in exchange for the so-called safety of the Jewish community. Unless the gold was delivered within 36 hours, 200 Jewish family heads would be deported.^[10] The community complied with the demand, but was not spared the deportation.

On October 8, SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, a special envoy of SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann at the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, RSHA), arrived in Rome to organize the deportation of the city's Jews to Auschwitz.^[11] He showed Kappler a deportation order signed by SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, chief of the RSHA "Amt IV" (Department 4). Dannecker was accompanied by a team of forty-four SS men of the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Deaths Head Corps), including fourteen officers. “They were part of an experienced and ruthless Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squad."^[12] These SS men formed the nucleus of Dannecker's raiders.^[13] Thus, Dannecker, despite being lower in rank than Kappler, led the organization of the raid and the transport, while Kappler assisted him. Kappler subsequently provided Dannecker with another three hundred SS men,^[14] as well as the names and addresses of the Jews of Rome, obtained from the Questura (Rome police headquarters).^[15] On October 11, Kappler received another telegram from Berlin, ordering "the immediate and complete elimination of Jewry in Italy."^[16]...