Conclusion

Abstract

When I began my research years ago I intended to write a concise history of Fossoli’s wartime operations, but the primary sources I had uncovered told a more complex story. Studying camp operations, I saw additional questions: Who built the camp? What inspired Carpigiani business transactions with Fossoli? How were Italian officials involved in the incarceration and deportation of Jews and others? Why did gentiles in the area join the Resistance and what motivated others to abstain? Should I think of those who did not resist as perpetrators, victims, or something else? What postwar conditions allowed Carpigiani to elide responsibility for their support of the camp? And what postwar political and religious factors shaped early memory of the Holocaust in Italy? Thus, while the camp history from May 1942 to March 1952 is the subject of The Holocaust and Compesnated Compliance in Italy: Fossoli di Carpi, 1942–1952, my analysis has engaged with themes outside the camp walls and beyond the wartime period.