We are in front of the new camp, one of the two parts composing the Fossoli camp, the other one, just next to it and facing Via dei Grilli, is called the ‘old camp’ and was demolished in 1946. The new camp is of considerable historical interest due to its long and layered history that began in 1942 and continued until 1970, making it witness to different historical events that spanned much of the 20th century, which can still be seen in the surviving barracks.
Its history began in the spring of 1942 with the establishment of a camp with tents - later replaced by brick barracks - where the Royal Italian Army sent the first British prisoners of war captured in the wartime operations in North Africa. After the armistice of September 8, 1943, the Nazi forces occupied the entire Fossoli camp, deporting the more than 5,000 British prisoners and the Italian guards. In the following months, between December ‘43 and November '44, the phases of the war would determine its various uses.
The Italian Social Republic puts it back into operation on December 5, 1943 making it a special camp to gather the Jews, who are now persecuted and imprisoned also in Italy following the measures issued against them. The Modena police headquarters and the Italian police force directly manage the camp until March 15, 1944 when the "new camp" goes under direct German command and becomes the main Italian deportation camp for both Jews and political opponents imprisoned at Fossoli from January 1944. Twelve convoys bring Fossoli prisoners to Nazi concentration camps: for the more than 2,850 Jews in Fossoli the destinations will be Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen and Flossemburg, while the more than 2,800 politicians will end up in Mauthausen.
In July 1944, the increasingly frequent Allied air raids and the actions of the Resistance force the Nazi authorities to dismantle the Fossoli camp and move its operations up north, to the Gries camp. The facilities of the new camp were used until November '44 for the transit of men and women being sent as forced labour to the Reich territories.
When the Liberation occurs, the Fossoli camp has been abandoned for months; the new camp is used to imprison the fascists and the collaborators awaiting trial and later becomes a collection centre for undesirable foreign refugees until 1947.
In that year, the Carpi priest Don Zeno Saltini peacefully occupies it with his little orphans to radically transform it into a place of brotherhood, giving life in the former concentration camp to the Nomadelfia community, which remains there until 1952.
The last, and longest, chapter of its history begins in 1954, when the Opera Profughi Giuliani rents it to provide accommodation for the Italian families who had to leave Istria, which has become definitively Yugoslavian. The Saint Mark’s Village (Villaggio San Marco), as the new camp is now called, remains in operation until 1970, accommodating over 150 families.
After years of abandonment, in 1984 the Italian State decides to give the Fossoli Camp to the Municipality of Carpi free of charge; for the new camp, still including the original facilities from the 1940s, a new memorial age begins.
In 1996 the Municipality of Carpi in conjunction with the Friends of the Museum-Monument to the Deportee Association establish the Fossoli Foundation, which still manages the Fossoli Camp to this date, in order to preserve and enhance the historical site, work in the research and documentation field, and develop educational and dissemination activities.
