Present entrance to Risiera di San Sabba.
Risiera di San Sabba (Slovene: Rižarna pri Sveti Soboti) was a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners during World War II, located in Trieste, northern Italy. SS members Odilo Globocnik and Karl Frenzel, and Ivan Marchenko are all said to have participated in the killings at this camp. Erwin Lambert is claimed to have installed cremation facilities. Today the former concentration camp is dedicated as a civic museum.
[edit] Background
The edifice was built in 1913 and first used as a rice-husking facility (hence the name "Risiera"). During World War II Nazi occupation forces in Trieste used the building to transport, detain and exterminate prisoners. Many occupants of Risiera di San Sabba were transported to the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Historians estimate that over 3,000 people were killed at the camp and thousands more imprisoned and transported elsewhere. The majority of prisoners came from Friuli, the Julian March, and the Province of Ljubljana.
After the war, the camp served as a refugee center and transit point. In the 1950's, many people, especially ethnic Italians fleeing then communist Yugoslavia, passed through the camp. Celebrity chef and restauranteur Lidia Matticchio Bastianich spent two years in the camp with her parents and brother before receiving visas to America.[1][2]
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Coordinates: 45°37′16″N 13°47′20″E / 45.621°N 13.789°E / 45.621; 13.789
