Overview

• At a state ceremony, President Sergio Mattarella honored Italian servicemen interned by Nazi Germany after 8 September 1943, calling their refusal to join Salò or Nazi forces a defense of national dignity and a true act of Resistance.
• He noted that their ordeal and courage were long marginalized in public memory, highlighting the solidarities forged in the camps as an ethical seedbed for the broader Resistance and the Republic.
• Italy’s Parliament unanimously established 20 September as the national Day of Italian Internees in German concentration camps, with the first commemorations including a Quirinale reception, a Foreign Ministry exhibition and a wreath at the Altare della Patria.
• Roughly 650,000 Italian military were detained in the Reich, many reduced to numbers and subjected to forced labor, a sacrifice the president said underpins freedoms enjoyed today.
• Newly spotlighted archival material describes a fascist plan to recruit internees through covert propaganda “companies” of provocateurs, propagandists and recruiters, though the document does not show if the scheme was carried out.