7 December 1943 Destination Camp

At the Risiera di San Sabba Museum from 7 December 2023 to 9 June 2024

Documents, pictures and testimonies about the first four months of the Nazi occupation in Trieste

On 7 December 1943 the first of many convoys of Jewish deportees departed from Trieste for Auschwitz.

The exhibition, focusing on the reconstruction of this convoy, examines the places of deportation, presents and the stories of victims and executioners, also considering the political deportation that took place in the preceding months.
Curated by a group of historians, it is realised by the Museum of the Risiera di San Sabba National Monument in collaboration with the Museum of the Jewish Community of Trieste “Carlo e Vera Wagner”, the National Association of Ex Deportees – Trieste Section, the State Archives of Trieste, the Foundation Centre for Contemporary Jewish Documentation of Milan, the Foundation Shoah Museum of Rome, the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Trieste.
The exhibition is curated by Sara Berger, Tullia Catalan, Franco Cecotti, Annalisa Di Fant, Stefano Fattorini, Dunja Nanut, Matteo Perissinotto (scientific coordination), Marcello Pezzetti, with the general coordination of Anna Krekic, curator of the Risiera di San Sabba Museum – National Monument.
The exhibition will be open to the public with free admission until 9 June 2024 during the opening hours of the Risiera di San Sabba.

Texts in Italian, Slovenian and English.

The exhibition project aims to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the departure of the first convoys from the city of Trieste to the Nazi concentration camps, through a rigorous and at the same time highly informative reconstruction of what happened at the time. The exhibition, which will be held precisely on the occasion of such an important anniversary, will be an important reference point for teachers and schoolchildren, as well as for the general public, in terms of knowledge of this historical moment, providing innovative and up-to-date didactic tools.  Images and maps will help the public visualise the story of those who were deported, placing it in the broader and more complex system of deportations from OZAK. The exhibition is the result of intensive research not only on the bibliography and studies already published and in progress, but also of new work on sources and archives that have only been available to scholars since few years, such as oral testimonies, family archives, the Coroneo Prison Registers, the racist censuses of 1938 and 1942, the Bad Arolsen Archives, the archives of the Republic of Slovenia and American, British and Norwegian archives.