Nazis deported more than 1,000 Jews from Rome to Auschwitz in October 1943.

Rome's Jewish community on Wednesday commemorated the 81st anniversary of the deportation of more than 1,000 of the city’s Jews to the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz.

The raid occurred in the Ghetto district at dawn on 16 October 1943, and two days later 1,022 Roman Jews, including 200 children, were sent to Auschwitz on a sealed train from Tiburtina station.

Only 16 would make it back to Rome alive: 15 men and one woman, Settimia Spizzichino.

The last of the 16 survivors, Lello Di Segni, died in Rome in 2018.

Deposizione della corona in ricordo del rastrellamento degli ebrei romani il #16ottobre 1943. pic.twitter.com/C0hjgYM7gB

— Comunità Ebraica di Roma (@romaebraica) October 16, 2024

On Wednesday morning the president of Rome's Jewish community Victor Fadlun was joined by Rome mayor Roberto Gualtieri and Lazio governor Francesco Rocca at a wreath-laying ceremony in the capital's Jewish Ghetto district. 

A plaque on a building near where the ceremony took place reads (in Italian): "Settimino Calò left this house where he lived with his wife Clelia Frascati and their nine children. When he returned here he found it empty forever. His loved ones had been rounded up on 16 October 1943 and then deported to Auschwitz along with more than 1,000 Jews."

Photo credit: NICOLA MESSANA PHOTOS / Shutterstock.com.