Concentration Camp Rižarna, Trieste, Italy

The two brick buildings with a large wall, a very narrow passage and high walls. When you arrive at the center of the camp, a horrifying scene opens up — what was really happening there. Where today there are marble tiles and a wall with apparent doors — where the ashes of the murdered camp inmates are kept, if you turn towards the south, you see the silhouette of the chimney from which the smoke of the burned people escaped. In each of the buildings, the cells where the camp inmates lived are preserved — some waiting for death and burning, others transferred to larger camps of death. Before the exit is the cell of death.

Here, 3,000 to 4,000 prisoners died. On 29 April 1945, the Nazis mined the crematorium.

The museum was opened on 24 April 1975.

LSI, 1: 148

"Rižarna" /Risiera di Trieste/ got its name because of the former rice mill, which was in the large dark buildings. The Germans turned Rižarna into the only extermination concentration camp (with a crematorium) in Italy during the war. Rižarna swallowed hundreds of partisans, helpless prisoners, men and women, especially Slovenes, Croats and Jews. Today, Rižarna is an Italian national monument (Monumento nazionale). Delegations from the Republic of Slovenia pay homage to the memory of the victims every year on 31 October.

Source: Memorials in the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Tomaž Pavšič, Trieste 1997