The Campo di Concentramento at Ferramonti had functioned for over three years in Tarsia, a deserted landscape in Calabria, the toe of Italy"s boot. It was the largest of Mussolini"s camps for Jews and political dissidents, and it represented Il Duce"s concession to Hitler that Italy would exercise a degree of anti-Semitism and detain the country"s Jews.
The first camp marshal was Gaetano Marrari, who viewed his responsibility as the protection of the human beings in his charge. No one was executed in Ferramonti; over the years only four internees died there, the result of Allied bombing, not the treatment of the camp"s Italian guards.
The camp developed a reputation in the surrounding area as a place that also had prisoners from various professions. In fact, the medical care provided by
