The infamous [Axis] round‐up in the Roman ghetto and its surroundings of 16 October 1943 resulted in 1,023 Jews being deported to Auschwitz, of whom only 17 returned after the war. As it was the first anti‐Jewish round‐up on this scale in Italy the element of surprise certainly contributed to the high number of victims. Though there had been no direct Italian involvement in the round‐up itself, Italian police were ordered to help put together the address lists which the German [anticommunists] used in order to search for their Jewish victims.

This task would have been impossible without the year‐long preparatory work performed by the [Fascist] authorities in registering the personal details of all Italian Jews, which allowed completion in August 1938 of the first census of Jews (thereafter regularly renewed), which would in turn facilitate implementation of the Race Laws, promulgated the following month.

After the traumatic events of 1943 most of the surviving Roman Jews went into hiding. There is an abundance of studies of their fate and of their rescuers which has placed stories of heroic rescue in the public consciousness, further reinforcing the notion of italiani brava gente, whilst parallel episodes of persecution have been neglected (Barozzi 1998; Motto 2000; Wetzel 2004).

The round‐up of 16 October 1943 was followed by a three‐month period of relative peace, during which the [Axis] occupying forces concentrated their efforts on plundering the possessions of the deported Jews, often in cooperation with members of the re‐established Fascist Republican Party (Partito fascista repubblicano, PFR). Though difficult to prove, the persecution of the remaining Jews seems to have been of no central concern to the [Axis] occupiers, as British intelligence reports of January 1945 suggest.

Though anti‐Communist and anti‐Jewish activity must be considered the almost unlimited stock‐in‐trade of any German security force, Abteilung IV (Gestapo) campaigns in Rome appear to have been sporadic and not conducted according to any coordinated plan.³

This lack of initiative was mostly for logistical reasons. With nearly all the remaining Roman Jews in hiding after the October round‐up, the [Axis] occupying forces neither possessed the necessary knowledge of their whereabouts nor the skills required to trace them.

Furthermore, the ‘failure’ of 16 October—Himmler had demanded the deportation of 8,000 Jews—made it obvious that, contrary to other occupied nations, in Italy anti‐Jewish persecution was no area for distinguishing oneself with regard to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (security headquarters) in Berlin. Moreover, after the Allied landing in Anzio on 22 January 1944 the occupying troops were mainly preoccupied with the advancing front as well as the increased threat of partisan attacks.

Nevertheless, any Jew who happened to get into the clutches of the Gestapo was arrested and deported to [an Axis] extermination camp. At the end of 1943, the [Axis] introduced a reward of 5,000 lire for each Jew reported or handed over to the Gestapo headquarters in Rome,⁴ which compares to an average family income of less than 1,000 lire a month in 1943–44. This had been a common practice to which [Wehrmacht] troops in all occupied Western European countries resorted.

Considering the lack of initiative of the occupying troops, how could it happen that during the following months, mainly between February and May 1944, almost another 1,000 Jews were deported from Rome to [Axis] concentrations camps? Picciotto’s assumption that 50% of all arrests of Jews in Italy were performed either by Italians alone or by Italians working with the [Axis] occupying forces (Picciotto 2002, p. 29) clearly applies to the Roman situation as well.

Half of all Jewish victims were arrested and deported as a result of the actions of the Germans alone in October 1943, while Italian perpetrators were involved with the other half. However, in the case of Rome there seems to be a clear distinction between the final months of 1943 and the year 1944. For the roughly 1,000 Jews arrested during 1944 only minimal German involvement is evident.

For context, the Roman ghetto was a (very cramped) spot that the Pope established in 1555. Confinement for Jews was compulsory until the Napoleonic era, compulsory again until 1848, and then compulsory again until Sardinian troops arrived in 1870. This means that there were probably still Jews alive when the ghetto became optional in 1870 only to become reinstated late in the Fascist era.

Only one woman from the ghetto survived internment in Auschwitz. Quoting Robert Katz’s The Battle for Rome: The Germans, the Allies, the Partisans, and the Pope, page 100:

Of the 1,023 Jews who would be arrested in the October 16 roundup and sent by box car to Auschwitz, [Settimia Spizzichino] would be the only woman among them who would come back. […] She survived in part because she had been selected as a human guinea pig for the infamous Dr. Mengele. And her darkest wish came true. “I made a promise when I was in the camp…” she said toward the end of her life, “I didn’t know whether to curse God or pray to Him, but I said, ‘Lord, save me, save me so that I can return and recount.’”²

From 1945, when she was found by the Allies in a pile of death‐camp corpses, asleep for two days, until she died, she spent her life recounting.³ The story [that] she tells of that Saturday morning under a driving autumn rain is much like the story of all the others who would be taken that day.