Fossoli concentration camp, located in Carpi (Modena), was set up by the Italian Military Command in May 1942 as a camp for British and American prisoners of war. Following the 8 September 1943 armistice, it was occupied by the Nazis who used it as a transit point sending political and racial prisoners on to the extermination camps in northern Europe from January to 2 August 1944. After the war the place housed Don Zeno Saltini’s Opera dei Piccoli Apostoli (subsequently known as Nomadelfia) from 1947 to 1952. From 1953 through the 1960s the camp hosted ethnic Italian refugees from Yugoslavia.
The camp was originally divided into four sectors: the first, intended as the surveillance unit, has buildings used for military and camp control activities; a second was occupied by the Jewish prisoners’ barracks with political prisoners in the third, while the fourth, which no longer exists, had other buildings. The original set-up of the camp has been modified according to its different uses, with the surveillance building in particular being converted into a small church.
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