Enrico Vanzini - Dachau survivor

Italian internee forced to work for Nazis

Enrico Vanzini kept his story
private for 60 years after WW2

Enrico Vanzini, a remarkable centenarian former soldier who survived seven months in a concentration camp after being forced to assist his captors as his fellow detainees were subjected to the horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime, was born on this day in 1922 in the town of Fagnano Olona in Lombardy.

Vanzini, who was stationed with the Italian army in Greece for much of World War Two, was arrested in September 1943 after swearing allegiance to the King of Italy rather than Benito Mussolini’s Republic of Salò.

He spent the remainder of the conflict as a prisoner of war in Germany, at the end of which he was forced to work as a member of the so-called Sonderkommando, a group of prisoners made to collaborate with the Nazi SS in the extermination of mainly Jewish detainees in their death camps.

Vanzini was made to assist among other things with the cremation of bodies at Dachau, just outside Munich, where he spent seven months. The ordeal ended when the camp was liberated by the Allies in April 1945, at which point he weighed just 64lbs (29kg).

At the age of 102 and resident of a care home in Padua, he is the only Italian former Sonderkommando still alive.

In his book, entitled L'ultimo sonderkommando italiano - The Last Italian Sonderkommando - he described himself as “an ordinary village lad” in Fagnano. He was born just 10 days after Mussolini’s Fascists took power in Italy.

The gates of the Dachau complex near
Munich, soon after it was liberated

His father, who had been a soldier in World War One, was no supporter of the Fascist regime and Vanzini grew up to have similar sentiments. Yet at the age of 18 he found himself fighting on the side of Mussolini and the Germans.

Having enlisted in the artillery in the Alba Barracks with the outbreak of war in 1939, he was initially destined for the Russian front but was spared being one of 115,000 Italians killed there by a bout of appendicitis. When he had recovered sufficiently to resume service, he was sent instead to Greece, where Italian casualties were far fewer.

He was still in Greece when Mussolini was arrested on the orders of the Italian monarch, King Victor Emmanuel III, in July 1943, and detained at a remote hotel in the Apennine mountains.  When the dictator was freed by German paratroopers two months later and installed as leader of the puppet state of Salò in Nazi-occupied northern Italy, Vanzini refused to be part of the new republic, swearing loyalty to the King instead.

Subsequently arrested, he became a prisoner of war and was put on a train in Athens and taken to the city of Ingolstadt in Bavaria, where he was forced to work in a tank chassis factory.

A year after his arrival there, the factory was destroyed in an American bombing raid and he and two companions slipped away in the ensuing chaos, only to be recaptured 10 days later in the countryside near Munich. Ironically, they were betrayed by an Italian girl who befriended them but turned out to be a spy working for the Germans.

Vanzini wrote a book about
his experience at Dachau

The trio were sent to Buchenwald and initially were condemned to death by firing squad. Arguing that they fled the Ingolstadt factory for their own safety, they were spared death but only after being earmarked to work in the gas chambers at Dachau, where their grim duties included retrieving bodies for cremation.

Thankfully, the arrival of Allied troops at Dachau allowed Vanzini to return home. Once he had regained his health, he had a career as a bus or lorry driver and lived a quiet life, keeping his experiences to himself for 60 years before, in 2003, he began to share his stories. At first he held conferences in schools and public halls, later participating in a documentary film and eventually writing his book.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, in January, 2013 the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, presented him with the Medal of Honour.

Extraordinarily, given what he had been through, Vanzini has enjoyed a remarkably long and healthy life. He was still fit enough at 99 years of age to be granted a two-year extension to his driver’s licence and, having revealed in an interview his lifelong devotion to the Inter-Milan football team, was presented with a special club shirt on his 100th birthday.

The Visconti Castle at Fagnano Olona has stood
guard over the town since Mediaeval times

Travel tip:

Fagnano Olona, where Vanzini was born, is a town of 12,301 inhabitants about 19km (12 miles) south of the city of Varese. Originally a Roman settlement, it occupied a strategic position on the Olona river. A castle built there in the Middle Ages was fought for by both the Della Torre and Visconti families in the 13th century and the armies of France and Spain 200 years later. The town has a number of important religious buildings including the Sanctuary of the Madonna della Selva and the parish church of San Gaudenzio. The mediaeval Visconti Castle in Piazza Cavour, between the centre of the town and the Olona river, today houses the town hall.

The waterfront at modern-day Salò, which is a
thriving resort on picturesque Lake Garda

Travel tip:

For all its associations with Mussolini and his Nazi allies, the town of Salò on the banks of Lake Garda is an attractive resort known for having the longest promenade on the lake.  The main sights  in Salò are the Duomo di Santa Maria Annunziata, which was rebuilt in late Gothic style in the 15th century and the Palazzo della Magnifica Patria, which houses an exhibition of important historical documents. There is also MuSa, il Museo di Salò, which opened in 2015 in la Chiesa di Santa Giustina in Via Brunati, which has exhibitions about the history of the town, including its brief period as a republic.  Mussolini’s home during the brief life of the Republic of Salò is now the Grand Hotel Feltrinelli in Via Rimembranza in Gargnano, a short distance along the coast of the lake.

Also on this day:

1626: The consecration of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome

1630: The birth of Holy Roman Empress Eleonora Gonzaga

1804: The birth of general and statesman Alfonso Ferrero La Marmora

1849: The birth of builder and architect Stefano Cardu

1891: The birth of architect and designer Gio Ponti

1906: The birth of publisher Gianni Mazzocchi

1911: The birth of poet Attilio Bertolucci

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Liliana Segre - Holocaust survivor

Schoolgirl who was spared after family killed

Liliana Segre did not begin to share
her memories until in her 60s

Holocaust survivor Liliana Segre, who was one of only a small number of Italian children to return home after being deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, was born on this day in 1930 in Milan.

Now a life member of the Italian Senate, Segre was shipped to the notorious camp in Nazi-occupied Poland when she was 13 years old, one of 776 Italians aged 14 and under to be sent to Auschwitz. Only 35 survived.

Forced to work in a munitions factory, she was twice moved to other camps during her time as a prisoner before being freed in May 1945, shortly after the Nazis surrendered to the Allies.

Born in to a successful Jewish family involved in the textile and leather goods industry, Liliana grew up in an apartment in Corso Magenta in the centre of Milan, not far from the Castello Sforzesco, to which her father, Alberto, had moved with his parents following the death of her mother, Lucia, from cancer when Liliana was still a baby.

She was unaware of being Jewish until the Fascist government introduced racial segregation laws in 1938, at which point she was expelled from her primary school.  

Liliana as a child with her father, Alberto,
at home in Milan in the 1930s

As the persecution of Jews intensified, the family home and other assets were confiscated. Liliana’s father hid his daughter with friends until, in 1943, the family attempted to flee to Switzerland. However, she and her father were arrested near the Swiss border and imprisoned, at first near Varese and later in Milan.

In January 1944, she and her father were taken to Milano Centrale railway station and taken to the underground platform - platform 21 - normally used by mail trains and herded into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz. On arrival at the camp seven days later, Segre was immediately separated from her father, whom she never saw again. Records show that he was killed in April of that year. 

The following month, her paternal grandparents, who had found refuge in the town of Inverigo, north of Milan, were arrested and similarly deported to Auschwitz, where they also died soon after arrival.

Segre lost four other family members who were deported by the Fascist government from Italy yet herself survived, having been moved to two different camps in northern Germany before she was liberated.

After the war, she lived with her maternal grandparents, who had escaped capture by hiding in a convent in Rome, in the Marche region before being adopted by her father’s brother, Amedeo, who began another textile business that eventually became successful.

One of the last family pictures of
Liliana before she was deported in 1943

Segre became involved with the business but after marrying another Holocaust survivor, the lawyer Alfredo Belli Paci, in 1948, lived a quiet life. They raised three children, who in turn gave them three grandchildren. Her daughter, Federica, became the fourth generation of the family to play a role in the business.

She recalled her experiences only privately until the early 1990s, when she decided the time was right to begin to share her memories with wider audiences, at first addressing schools and universities, later larger conferences.

She has collaborated with many books, films and TV documentaries and her contribution to Italy’s understanding of what happened to her among an estimated 7,600 Italian Jews who died at Auschwitz and associated camps was recognised on 19 January 2018, the 80th anniversary of the Italian Racial Laws, when the Italian president, Sergio Mattarella, appointed her as a Senator for Life.

Liliana Segre is the fourth woman to hold such a position, after Camilla Ravera, Rita Levi-Montalcini and Elena Cattaneo.  In her role, she has been instrumental in setting up a parliamentary commission on racism, anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred and violence. 

Regrettably, after receiving numerous threats to her personal safety, she had to be assigned a bodyguard in 2019 but has continued to have a high public profile. Earlier this year, on the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on 29 January, she spoke before the European Parliament, where she was given an ovation by the full assembly.

The Castello Sforzesco is
one of Milan's major sights

Travel tip:

The Castello Sforzesco, which is close to where Liliana Segre grew up and where she lives now, is one of the main sights for visitors to Milan, situated to the northwest of the city centre, with the Parco Sempione behind it. Francesco Sforza built it on the site of the Castello di Porta Giovia, which had been the main residence in the city of the Visconti family, from which Francesco was descended. The Viscontis ruled Milan for 170 years. Renovated and enlarged a number of times in subsequent centuries, it became one of the largest citadels in Europe and now houses several museums and art collections.

Milan's Naviglio Grande is lined with bars
and restaurants that make it popular at night

Travel tip:

The textile factory in which Liliana’s grandfather, Giuseppe, worked as a young man in the late 1890s was in the Navigli district, an area to the southwest of central Milan that originally consisted of five canals used for commercial transport in the city that date back to the Middle Ages. Their importance declined in the last century and only two - Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese - still exist.  Once a poor neighbourhood, the Navigli is now very popular for the restaurants and bars that line the two waterways and is often thronged with young Milanese in the evenings.

Also on this day:

1887: The birth of Giovanni Gronchi, Italy’s third president

1890: The birth of fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli 

1960: At the Rome Olympics, Abebe Bikila becomes the first sub-Saharan African to win a gold medal

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