The Rab concentration camp (Slovene: Koncentracijsko taborišče Rab; Croatian: Koncentracijski logor Rab; Italian: Campo di concentramento per internati civili di Guerra – Arbe) was one of the several Italian concentration camps and was established during World War II, in July 1942, on the Italian-occupied island of Rab (now in Croatia).
The Italian concentration camp served as equivalent of final solution in Mario Roatta's ethnic cleansing policy against ethnic Slovenes from the Italian-occupied Province of Ljubljana and Croats from Gorski Kotar.
According to historians James Walston and Carlo Spartaco Capogeco, the annual mortality rate in the camp was higher than the average mortality rate in Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald (which was 15%), at least 18 percent. According to Monsignor Joze Srebnic, Bishop of Veglia (Krk island]), on 5 August 1943 reported to Pope Pius XII that "witnesses, who took part in the burials, state unequivocally that the number of the dead totals at least 3500".
In September 1943, after the armistice with Italy, the camp was closed, but some of remaining Jewish internees were deported by German forces to the extermination camp at Auschwitz.
Yugoslavia, Greece and Ethiopia requested extradition of 1,200 Italian war criminals who however never saw anything like Nurnberg trial, because the British government with the beginning of the Cold War saw in Pietro Badoglio a guarantee of an anti-communist post-war Italy.
Read more about Rab Concentration Camp: Establishment of The Camp, Inmates and Camp Conditions, Jewish Internees At Rab, Closure of The Camp, Memories of Survivors, Collective Memory Repression During The Cold War, Historical Revisionism
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