Will this be discussed on Remembrance Day? ---- Read the story of the
fascist concentration camp of Giado, in Libya, where members of thelocal Jewish community were interned. ---- (Remember that the Jews can
be divided into two large groups: Ashkenazim, those coming from Eastern
Europe, and Sephardim, those who settled in North Africa, coming from
Spain). ---- In the photo, General Bastico, organizer of the roundups.
---- The Jews in the fascist concentration camp of Giado. ---- In
February 1942, Mussolini ordered that all the Jews of Cyrenaica be
gathered in a concentration camp in Tripolitania. Three weeks later, the
first roundups of the Jewish community of Cyrenaica were carried out
under the leadership of General Bastico. Thus the concentration camp of
Giado was born.
The testimony of the deportee Ofek is shocking: "Every two weeks, the
oppressor hung up in the square of Benghazi a list of the families who
had to get ready to go to the schools from where they would depart. They
loaded us onto trucks, the ones usually used to transport goods. And the
journey would last five days... In all, 2,600 families were taken away.
We arrived at the Giado camp on the eve of Pesach, the Jewish
Passover... Italian and Arab soldiers kept watch on the fence and anyone
who approached risked being shot by the guards' rifles. They gave us 120
grams of bread a day. The other things to eat were distributed on
Sundays for the entire week: five grams of rice a day, three grams of
oil, three grams of tomato paste, five grams of sugar and five grams of
coffee... They forced us to work for twelve hours straight, without a
break, without interruption, without rest... It was daily torture... We
organized a delegation of Jews to go to the commander, the major, and
ask for larger rations. He laughed at us... It was only after much
crying and some convincing speeches from the elders of our community
that the cruel commander allowed the Arabs in the area to sell us
vegetables, dates and wheat... Of course we had no money with us....
After a day of work, completely exhausted. We worked for the Arab
village, our women sewed clothes for them and in exchange we got
something from their gardens...".
In Giado, one hundred and eighty kilometers south of Tripoli, near the
ridge of Gebel Nefusa, the Jews collected stones and carried them from
one side of the camp to the other. A useless, senseless work that only
served to tire them out and destroy them psychologically. The Nazi
madness had reached there too. In 1942, about 2,000 Jews were rounded up
throughout Libya and sent to this location.
Moshe Saban remembers it this way: "It was terrible. That's how we got
sick, all those infections and typhoid. I remember taking off my shirt
and seeing the bugs... half the size of a mosquito crawling on my body.
In the evening, around 7:00 p.m. when it started to get dark, we were
forced to go to sleep. The officer would come in with a whip and woe
betide anyone who kept talking or making any other noise... He would go
from one hut to another to check on anyone who had a fever and take the
sick to the hospital. Anyone who left their family and went to the
hospital knew they would never come back." The work was exhausting and
nerve-wracking. Yehuda Chachmon remembers that they were busy "digging
deep holes and digging up rocky earth. The next day they would bring in
another group and make them fill the same holes with the same stuff.
They would draw a line around the place where we were working and anyone
who dared to cross that line was killed...".
Horror erupted in the life of the camp when the English arrived with a
horrifying order: all male Jews were to be rounded up and killed, while
the 480 patients in the camp infirmary were to be taken to the basement
to be burned. Miraculously, this order was revoked. The English found
sick people everywhere in Giado, wearing only rags, lying on the ground,
in the barracks, in unhygienic conditions, without beds, suffering from
typhus and starving. More than 560 men, women and children of Jewish
origin lost their lives there, data that make Giado the Italian
concentration camp with the highest number of victims.
Source
The Jews in the fascist concentration camp of Giado
https://www.historiaregni.it/gli-ebrei-nel-campo-di-concentramento-fascista-di-giado/
https://ponte.noblogs.org/2025/3956/gli-ebrei-nel-campo-di-concentramento-fascista-di-giado/
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