---

The double deportation

Deportation from Parma prison

---

By the end of 1942, in the San Francesco prison in Parma - a former convent transformed into the town gaol at the beginning of the 19th century - 266 Yugoslav civilians were serving prison sentences¹. 

The first to arrive on 22 February, after a series of trials, were 23 Montenegrins, found guilty by the Military War Tribunal of Cetinje of having committed such crimes as belonging to an armed band, attacking the Italian Armed Forces, illegally possessing weapons and ammunition, etc. In the wake of the Montenegrins, the following month thirteen people were convicted of similar crimes by the Dalmatia Special Tribunal. In April it was the turn of seventeen Slovenian and Croatian civilians to be tried by the Military Court in Ljubljana.

Internees continued to be sent to Parma on a regular basis during 1943. On 8 September - the day of the Italian Armistice – the number of prisoners had risen to 524 and included 36 Greek citizens who had been sentenced by the 11th Army Military War Tribunal. This influx of prisoners was not even stemmed by the German occupation and the creation of the Italian Social Republic. For example, on 26 September another 47 Yugoslavs arrived from the prison in Koper. At the end of September 1943 the names of 67 Montenegrins, 79 Croats, 168 Dalmatians, 36 Greeks, and 217 Slovenes and Croatians from the Littoral (coastal region) appear in the prison register, together with 4 persons whose provenance was not specified².

Among the 168 Dalmatians there was a large group from Split, whose passage through the courts had in many cases begun as a consequence of arrests made by the Italians from November 1941 onwards, under orders from two police officers, namely De Vincenzi and Marshall Franceschetti. Frequently, in the statements made by the victims of deportation or their relatives, the role of local informers who worked for the Italians as translators and, in at least one case, also actively participated in torture, is emphasised. Internees generally began their term of imprisonment in the town gaols of Solinska Cesta (via Salona) and San Rocco, where they were often tortured³.

Some of them were young students who were given very heavy sentences for minor offences, such as having damaged fascist emblems or drawn anti-fascist symbols on the town walls.

Ante Bačić, a fourth-year pupil at the Technical Middle School in Split, was arrested by the Italian police in April 1942 and sentenced to ten years in prison for "subversive activity in schools". According to evidence given by his mother, a couple of weeks before his arrest some Italian police officers had forcibly entered the house claiming to be acting on the recommendation of the principal,who had accused the youngster of refusing to give the fascist salute and of expressing rebellious and anti-Italian sentiments⁴. Bačić was initially sent to Puglia and then to the prison in Parma before being deported to Germany.

Miljenko Benac was arrested in Bakar, where he attended the Military Academy, for taking food to the partisans. Sentenced to death by the Court of the 2nd Army of Fiume, the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment in Parma gaol, from where he was then deported to Germany⁵.

The extremely bad conditions in Split gaol - the overcrowding and the lack of food – were the cause of frequent illnesses. Sebastian Kliškić spent almost a year and a half there following his arrest in November 1941, during which time he was hospitalized on at least two occasions for diphtheria and typhus. Taken to hospital by the carabinieri, he spent his stay in bed, his legs immobilized by heavy chains that caused him injuries⁶.

In addition to the people from Split, several youngsters from the island of Zlarin arrived in Parma gaol after having been arrested en masse by the local commander of the carabinieri in June 1942. Of the thirty or so youngsters found guilty of subversive activities and supporting the partisans, and sentenced by the Special Tribunal of Dalmatia to thirty years imprisonment, at least three were the victims of double deportation⁷.

Dinko Kolak-Prlj, from the Sibenik district, was sentenced to 18 years for aiding armed gangs and for acts against the Italian armed forces. What happened has been reconstructed from documents relating to the trial. On the instructions of the agronomist administrator of the monastery at Dragović - who declared himself to be Catholic, but was opposed to the Ustascia ( the Croatian fascist movement ) which employed him - Kolak-Prlj was to have collected food and supplied it to the partisans⁸. The partisans and their supporters would make themselves known to one another upon meeting by rubbing a ring against their sleeve. The simple discovery of a ring at the home of the accused was considered to be sufficient evidence against Kolak-Prlj, and in the end he confessed.

Even anti-Italian statements made under the influence of drink could be grounds for heavy sentences. Nikola Perić was engaged in a lively discussion about communism in a tavern when an Italian corporal, a Croatian interpreter, entered. He alleged during Perić's trial that the latter had said to him: "I am afraid of being arrested and interned because every evening the Italians take people away. But they won't catch me because I'll run away, when I'm in the maquis I'll get my hands on a machine gun and when the Italians go past I'll start shooting”. Found guilty of communist propaganda and of having supplied food to the partisans, he was sentenced to 9 years and 18 months. Perić, detained in the judicial prison in Šibenik, was deported to Italy by sea. After landing in Ancona along with other prisoners, all of whom were chained together in groups of 12 or 13⁹, he arrived in Parma in July 1942.

The conditions under which the prisoners were living in Parma gaol were very bad, especially with regard to lack of food and overcrowding. Twelve deaths occurred, half of which were due to tuberculosis, an epidemic which led to the transfer of at least a dozen inmates to a prison hospital on the Tuscan island of Pianosa.

The political prisoners rejected the symbolic and practical aspects of prison life, which they took to be a demonstration of the regime's authority: they refused to give the fascist salute and to work inside the prison, refusals punished by prison governor who put them in solitary confinement¹⁰.

However, according to some testimonies, despite the deprivations, the treatment in Parma gaol was better than in other fascist prisons, especially where the opportunities of communicating with other prisoners were concerned.

The political changes that took place after 25 July 1943 (the arrest of Mussolini and the establishment of a new government under Marshal Badoglio) did not affect in any way the "status" of the prisoners in Parma, nor of the other Yugoslav detainees or internees in Italy. During the 45 days of the Badoglio government, not a single one was freed.

At that time, on the initiative of the Yugoslav communist prisoners, a committee was set up in the prison. According to the testimony of Rudolf Alfirev, born in 1905 in the Dalmatian town of Vodice, who had previously belonged to part a communist cell set up in the prison in Šibenik, the members of the prison committee in Parma came from a wide variety of backgrounds, both professional and territorial: amongst them were students, lawyers, mechanics and farm labourers¹¹. The committee aimed to achieve both immediate results – such as improving prison conditions (from food to medical care) and raising money with which to procure food - and strategic ones, in the event of a future release. Regarding the latter, attempts were made to establish relations with the cells of the Parma Communist Party outside the prison.

Some initiatives led to real improvements, such as getting the prison management to listen to their complaints. In addition, the committee organized the publication of a handwritten newsletter, "Vijesti" [News], and occasionally a humorous paper entitled "Kibla" [Latrina]¹².

The Committee's initiatives in boycotting all forms of work which would supply the needs of the the occupying power and could be viewed as collaboration with the enemy, were less successful¹³. On at least one occasion, the frictions deriving from this stance led to the physical aggression of an inmate accused of "collaborationism"¹⁴.

Exactly what happened to the Yugoslav political prisoners being held in Parma gaol after the German occupation of Italy is still not clear. On the orders of the German military command in Parma, between 11 November and 19 December 1943 about 50 prisoners, almost all of whom were Slovenes, were released and transferred to Ljubljana. In the same period the prison governor informed the head of the province of Parma that the German military headquarters had asked him for a list of prisoners who were foreign nationals. He also announced a pending visit by a commission made up of German officers with the remit to "subject those who had been sentenced outside national confines to medical examination"¹⁵. It even came to the notice of the Yugoslav government in exile that in the Parma gaol there were about 600 Yugoslavs in a very poor state of health who were about to be deported to Germany¹⁶.

On 23 December 1943 the following comment was written in the Parma prison register next to the names of 325 "Slav" detainees: "Freed on the orders of the German Headquarters in Parma and transferred to Germany for work". According to the testimony of Milan Ivančicć, it was the prison governor, whom he remembered as Peppi, who handed over the control of the Yugoslav detainees to the Germans¹⁷.

The remaining 170 Yugoslavs were instead repatriated - again following German orders - on 15 January 1944.

It is not clear what this different outcome depended on. According to some testimonies¹⁸, in this case, as in other prisons and concentration camps in Italy, the negotiations which took place between representatives of the Slovenian and Croatian Red Cross on the one hand and the Germans on the other, were instrumental in preventing the deportation of all the Yugoslav prisoners. It is worth mentioning that, after 8 September 1943, one of the representatives of the Croatian Red Cross was Krunoslav Stjepan Draganović¹⁹, a priest who had been sent to Italy following a decision taken by Ante Pavelić, leader of the Ustascia, and the Croatian church.

It is possible that the liberation and repatriation of some of the Yugoslav detainees can be explained in light of new political alliances formed after the armistice of 8 September 1943 in the areas formerly occupied by Italy. 

However, Abram Ćosić, an illiterate miller, the father of ten children from the village of Graba (in the municipality of Sinj) who arrived in Parma in July 1942 after being sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for acts of hostility towards the Italian Armed Forces, was of a different opinion: those released on 15 January 1944 were the old and the sick, who returned home with following the intermediation of the Croatian Red Cross²⁰.

The fate of the Yugoslav detainees deported to Germany from Parma gaol is somewhat singular. In fact, while those taken by the Germans from the prisons of Perugia, Sulmona, Capodistria and Pola all ended up in the concentration camps of the Reich, the prisoners from Parma were distributed between various labour camps associated with specific factories, especially in the Ruhr region, in which living conditions were certainly less harsh.

Nikola Perić was initially sent to the city of Cologne and then transferred to Essen, where the Krupp industrial plants were located²¹. Some passed through Duisburg, from where they were later sent to other camps²². Rudolf Alfirev, Josip Delonga, Ivan Gatara and Jure Grubišić began working in Duisburg in January 1944 for DEMAG AG Werk²³. 

Ante Bačić was assigned firstly to the Süddeutsche Strassenbahn in Essen-Delving and later to the Krupp Rüstungsfabrik (arms factory) in Essen, where he remained until March 1945²⁴. In nearby Mülheim an der Ruhr, Miljenko Benac was employed at Siemenswerk. 

Viktor Lukin and Tome Kranjac were sent first of all to Forsterbruch (in the Sterkrade district of Oberhausen) and from there to Essen where they remained until the defeat of Germany²⁵. Nedeljko Janković, after having served time in the prisons of Koper and Parma, became a forced labourer in the Zivilarbeiterlager Gemeinschaft Lager no. 824 at Essen-Bergerhausen, part of the Friedrich Krupp industrial complex. Dinko Kolak-Prlj and Mate Bisevac were sent to the Wolf armaments factory at Buckau, Magdeburg²⁶.

Some deportees died in the camps, others disappeared without trace. Ivan Grubišić died at the age of 23 in the Zivilarbeiterlager in Essen-Borbeck (Weidkamp) belonging to Krupp, where he was working in the tank factory: his father Tomo was also employed there as a forced labourer²⁷.

Many returned home after the labour camps were liberated, for example Nikola Perić reached his native Sinj in August 1944. Some forced labourers were freed and repatriated before the end of the war because they became incapacitated, for example Frane Kuzmarić, whose mental illness was caused by the bombings²⁸. Josip Delonga, who fell ill with tuberculosis, returned from Duisburg in 1944 a "living skeleton"²⁹. Others claimed to have fled from these labour camps, such as Grgica Kokan and Milan Ivančić, who later joined the resistance³⁰.

After 15 January 1944 several other Yugoslav detainees were held in Parma gaol. The prison register has entries for 152 people, all of whom were released at the end of February of the same year.

Andrea Giuseppini e Francesca Rolandi (2018)

THE menu

---

Internees

---

• Introduction
• From Cairo Montenotte concentration camp to forced labour at Gusen
• From Koper (Capodistria) prison to forced labour in Neuengamme
• From Forlì prison to Bavaria
• Double deportation from Sulmona Prison
• The Deportation of Montenegrins: from Ponza concentration camp to German concentration camps
• From Molat concentration camp to Germany
• Deportation from Perugia gaol to Dachau and Buchenwald
• Deportation from Parma prison