Cremona Displaced Persons Camp

Background

Located in the hills surrounding Milan, Cremona was one of the largest displaced persons (DP) camps in northern Italy. It housed between 1,000 and 1,200 refugees in 1945-47. The camp population was predominantly Jewish and was continuously in flux due to its proximity to the Austrian border, where Jews hoped to cross into Italy and arrange emigration. Founded by the UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) in the quarters of a requisitioned schoolhouse, Cremona DP camp suffered a severe clothing and food shortage in the summer of 1946, partially due to the difficulty of providing for a transient population.

The shortage led to a decline in the population from nearly 1,100 in June 1946, to 950 in November 1946. The Joint (The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) responded by organizing the shechita (ritual slaughter) of kosher beef in Cremona. The camp also hosted the first children’s dormitory in the Italian UNRRA camps. The Joint hailed Cremona's workshops as the "best organized in the whole of Italy" in November 1946, praising the camp's success in producing small radios that the Joint distributed in other Italian camps. Cremona housed 1,142 people on March 31, 1947, several months before the population was shifted to southern Italy.

Survivor Testimony

An edited collection of early narratives of Holocaust survivors, Fresh Wounds, edited by Donald L. Niewyk, contains an interview with survivor Isaac W., who recalls his experiences in Cremona:

“We were put into the Cremona camp, eighty kilometers from Milan. Before it had been an armory for soldiers. [It was] like a stable, without doors, without windows, the floor of stone. We lived in one room, eighty people. My entire kibbutz was there.”