Rome, Italy

Rome is the capital city of Italy. Rome is a thriving community, with a sizeable Jewish population. As you can see from this picture, Rome was a bustling community for the Jewish people before the war.

 In 1939, Italy joined the Axis, and declared war and Britain and France. The SS only cracked down on the Jewish population in late 1943. Over 12,000 Jews lived in Rome during September of 1943; most of them had been there their whole life. When the SS started to seize Jews, the Italian police didn’t assist in the capturing of Jews, so only about 1,800 were taken, while over 10,000 managed to go into hiding. The Jewish population was very lucky in Rome. Without the assistance of the Italian police, the SS couldn’t round up as many Jewish people. The city was liberated on June 4, 1944, by the US military. The Jewish population sustained very strongly in Rome.