Fiume, Italy

Members of the Boys were born in Fiume in Italy, now Rijeka in Croatia.

The Boys were teenage and child-Holocaust survivors, who were brought to the UK after the war for rest and rehabilitation.

Members of the Boys were held in Nazi labour and concentration camps and used as slave labourers. They had also survived World War II in hiding or as lone children.

^{Postage stamp from the independent state of Fiume, 1920.}

Modern-day Rijeka, formally Fiume, Italy, is a major port city in northern Croatia.

Background

From 1804, it was part of the Austrian Empire. During the Hungarian revolution of 1848, when Hungary tried to gain independence from Austria, Rijeka was captured by the Croatian troops (loyal to Austria) commanded by Ban Josip Jelačić. The city was then annexed directly to Croatia, although it did keep a degree of autonomy.

The second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (up to World War I) was a period of great prosperity, rapid economic growth and technological dynamism.

When in 1776 it became attached to Hungary as its port, Jews from Hungary began to settle there, but until the mid-19th century the majority of Jews were Sephardim from Split and Dubrovnik. After 1848 with the influx of Hungarian, German, Bohemian, and Italian Jews, Italian and German rites were also used.

It was a majority Italian city before World War I. The Jewish population expanded rapidly, particularly in the 1870s-1880s, and built a large synagogue in 1907, which would be destroyed in 1944, during the German occupation.

The Story of the Boy’s Families: The Bucci Family

Interwar Years

Habsburg-ruled Austria-Hungary’s disintegration in October 1918 during the closing weeks of World War I led to the establishment of rival Croatian-Serbian and Italian administrations in the city; both Italy and the founders of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) claimed sovereignty based on their ethnic populations.

On 10 September 1919, the Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed, declaring the Austro-Hungarian monarchy dissolved. Two days later a force of Italian nationalist irregulars led by the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio captured the city and established an independent state.

In 1922, Fiume was annexed by Italy which was now under fascist control. A period of Italianisation followed.

In 1938, the racial laws of Fascist Italy were promulgated in nearby Trieste.

Jews with Italian citizenship were subject to discrimination, and foreign Jews were to be interned in camps.

1943

After the surrender of Italy to the Allies in September 1943, Rijeka and the surrounding territories were occupied and annexed by Germany, becoming part of the Adriatic Littoral Zone.

The German and Italian occupiers and their local collaborators deported some 80% of the city’s roughly 500 Jews to Auschwitz. A larger proportion of Rijeka’s Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust than that of any other city in Italian territory.

Aftermath

When Rijeka became part of Yugoslavia in 1945, many Italian-speaking Jews left for Trieste and Italy; in 1947 there were some 170 Jews in Rijeka and the surrounding area. The community numbered 99 in 1969. Following the evacuation of Bosnian Jews from the war zone in 1992, around 60 families reconstituted the community, but many subsequently left for Zagreb and other localities in northern Croatia, leaving fewer than 100 Jews in 2004.

Visiting Rijeka

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Getting there Rijeka has an airport with continental connections.

What to see

Orthodox Synagogue (Ulica Ivana Filipovića 9) One of only three in Croatia to survive WWII unscathed, this 1930s Art Deco building was restored in 2008 and serves as the active center for the small community.

Kozala Municipal Cemetery (Jewish Section) Established in 1875, this site contains over 500 preserved gravestones, a ceremonial hall (Tahara House), and a Holocaust memorial.

Memorial for the Great Synagogue (Corner of Pomerio St. / Ciottina St) The 1903 Moorish-revival style synagogue designed by Lipót Baumhorn was burned by Nazis in 1944. Its location is now commemorated with a painted footprint.

Further afield

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Trieste in the northeastern corner of Italy played a key role in the Holocaust and in the lives of the Bucci sisters. Two places are key in their story:

Piazza Unità d’Italia A spectacular square that opens out onto the sea. It was here in 1938, that Mussolini announced the anti-Jewish Racial Laws. A small plaque on the town hall commemorates the event.

Risiera di San Sabba (Via Giovanni Palatucci 5; free) In the southern suburbs of Trieste, this is one of Italy’s most important Holocaust museums. The former industrial rice-processing plant was built in 1898, but closed in the early 1930s. It was then used as a military barracks before the occupying German forces turned it into a temporary prison camp for captured Italian soldiers. It was then used as a detention centre for Croatian, Italian and Slovenian partisans and political prisoners, and as a transit and extermination camp for Jews. Prisoners destined for deportation were taken in wagons to Trieste’s Central Station. The Bucci sisters have been campaigning for a memorial to built at the station.