Turin, the memory of 20 Jewish women arrested in 1943

One of the darkest pages of the Shoah in Turin has long remained unknown. On December 3, 1943, the fascist police arrested 20 Jewish women between 65 and 85 years of age in the shelter of Via Como 140 (today Via Ghedini 6). The women had been displaced from the Israelite Hospice in Piazza Santa Giulia, which had been bombed in August. After the ordinance of the Mussolini-led, Nazi-GermOne of the darkest pages of the Shoah in Turin has long remained unknown. On December 3, 1943, the fascist police arrested 20 Jewish women between 65 and 85 years of age in the shelter of Via Como 140 (today known as Via Ghedini 6). The women were there because they had been displaced from the Israelite Hospice in Piazza Santa Giulia, which had been bombed in August. After the ordinance of the Mussolini-led, Nazi-German puppet state Republic of Salò on November 30, 1943, they became targets of the Jew hunt officially initiated by the fascists. They were thus all taken from Via Como and incarcerated in Turin’s Le Nuove” prison.
“An event largely unknown with some of its pieces are still missing,” Claudio Mercandino, a journalist of the ANPI (National Association of Italian Partisans) “Renato Martorelli” section, told Pagine Ebraiche. Mercandino has dealt with the case in depth, starting with an initial cue from the historian Nicola Adducci. “From a numerical point of view, it is the most significant episode of the Shoah in Turin,” he noted. “Yet even we knew little to nothing about it,” the president of the city’s Jewish Community, Dario Disegni, confirmed. Turin’s municipality has now decided to pay a tribute to these women’s, by dedicating a plaque and a garden to their memory.
Their fate, Mercandino recounts, can be divided into several acts. “After the arrest, between December 12 and 14, most of the 20 women were freed on the basis of a document temporarily suspending the detention procedure for people over 70 or seriously ill.” Out of the 20 women, some died in a communal shelter of hardship and illness: Vittoria Bianchi, Giustina Debenedetti, Giuseppina Finzi, Letizia Jachia, Diamante Levi, Esterina Levi, Giulia Sforni.
“Two of them (Rosina Valobra and Consolina Levi) are buried in the cemeteries of Pinerolo and Strambino Romano. At least six were captured in the second act of this story: on March 7, 1944, they were arrested again in another hospice raid. They were deported first to Fossoli and from there to Auschwitz, where they were immediately killed. Five others survived. We know very little of all of them,” Mercandino explains. However, we know their names: Teresita Teglio, Sara Colombo, Rosa Vita, Emma Lascar, Ercolina Levi, Aida Montagnana, Dolcina De Angeli, Ottavia Levi, Eugenia Treves, Zeffira Ghiron, Eugenia Finzi. “But there might be other names. Men, for example, are missing.” Precise references to the identities of these people are also missing. “Unfortunately, at the moment there are very few oral records that remember them,” Disegni pointed out.

Translated by Klara Mattiussi, revised by Annadora Zuanel, students at the Secondary School of Modern Languages for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.