Qualla: Monigo concentration camp

Monigo concentration camp: Introduction

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormtrooper, CC BY-SA 4.0. "They were not normal corpses," the pathologist said. "They looked like mummies or exhumed bodies." Professor Menemio Bortolozzi of Treviso's hospital was describing what he found at the Monigo concentration camp, a facility that Italy's fascist government operated inside a military base on the outskirts of Treviso between July 1942 and September 1943. The camp held mostly Slovenian and Croatian civilians — men, women, and children swept up in the Italian military's campaign to suppress partisan resistance in occupied Yugoslavia. An estimated 10,000 people passed through Monigo, with an average of 2,582 prisoners held at any given time in a facility designed for 2,400.

Image: Stormtrooper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monigo concentration camp: Behind the Barbed Wire

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormtrooper, CC BY-SA 4.0. The camp occupied five brick barracks inside the Cadorin military base, northwest of Treviso's center. A sixth barracks housed the guards. Two small rooms served as bathroom and canteen; a seventh cabin doubled as kitchen and command post. The first prisoners, arriving on July 1,...

Image: Stormtrooper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monigo concentration camp: Nine Hundred Calories

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormtrooper, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the start, the diet at Monigo was a slow form of destruction. Prisoners received a cup of tea in the morning, a loaf of bread later, rice at lunch, and a slice of cheese in the late afternoon — roughly 911 calories a day, less than half what a sedentary adult needs to surviv...

Image: Stormtrooper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monigo concentration camp: News from Behind the Wire

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormtrooper, CC BY-SA 4.0. Even within these conditions, prisoners organized a life that their captors had not planned for. Slovenian internees formed a choir. They held chess tournaments. Most remarkably, they produced a handwritten newspaper they called Novice izza žice — "News from Behind the Barbed Wir...

Image: Stormtrooper | CC BY-SA 4.0

Monigo concentration camp: What the Walls Remember

Mon, 23 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stormtrooper, CC BY-SA 4.0. The camp closed after Italy's armistice with the Allies in September 1943. The barracks returned to their original military function, and today the site houses the Italian Army's 33rd Electronic Warfare Regiment. For decades, the camp's history received little public attention — ...

Image: Stormtrooper | CC BY-SA 4.0