Category:DP Rome (subject)

Rome DP camp / Cinecittà DP camp (see Holocaust Children Studies)

• See Displaced Children -- Displaced Children, Italy

Overview

USHMM

Situated in Rome, Cinecittà served as the administrative capital for displaced persons (DPs) in Italy, and as a DP camp that housed 680 Jewish refugees in 1947. The camp was founded by the Allied Commission in 1945, and a synagogue View This Term in the Glossary and nursery were established on the premises. During that year, the camp reached a capacity of 1,800 Jewish and non-Jewish DPs.

The executive staff of the Joint (The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) in Italy met at the camp. The Central Committee of Liberated Jews in Italy (also called the Merkaz ha-Plitim) also convened there and published the chief Jewish DP newspaper of Italy, Baderekh (On the Way). Most issues of the Italian DP press were printed by various political groups in Cinecittà, including the Farn Folk of the former partisans, Undzer Vort of the Poalei Zion Hitachdut (Association of Zionist Workers), Al Chofim of the Histadrut yechud ha-Tsionim ha-Kelaliyim be-Italiyah (Organization of Unified General Zionists in Italy), and the Natsyonaler Informatsye Byuletin by the Italian chapter of Beit Trumpeldor.

The complex, which was partially destroyed from Allied bombing during World War II, became a refuge for people of thirty nationalities, including Poles, Russians, Iranians, Chinese, Roma, and Jews, who had survived Nazi killing centers. Refugees were housed in the studios, surrounded by movie sets, backdrops, and props. The film “Quo Vadis?” was produced in the camp area in 1949; it is likely that DPs served as extras in the film.

Mordehai Greenberg, who was 12 at the time, recalls life in the refugee camp near Rome:

“We arrived in Rome, and were taken straight to Cinecittà. . . This was the city of movies. The entire right side belonged to refugees from Naples, from all sorts of places, from the shellings. The left side was for the more distinguished crowd, all with different nationalities, foreigners who had been thrown into the war. I had friends there from Yugoslavia, France, from many different places. We also studied there. Once, we performed in some Hanukah party that the scouts in Rome organized…We had a room, others lived in a recording studio, so they just put up dividing walls made out of cardboard… One day they took us to the Brigade's show in Rome. [Yossi] Yadin and Hannah Meron were there. . . 60-70 of us went there by truck. We hardly held onto the ladders. We traveled standing up.”

In 2013, a film entitled “The DP Camp of Cinecittà,” premiered. It was directed by Marco Bertozzi, with research undertaken by Noa Steimatsky of the University of Chicago.