Civico Museo della Risiera di San Sabba (San Sabba Risiera Civic Museum), Trieste (must see)

The San Sabba Risiera (Risiera di San Sabba) is a five-story brick building erected in 1913 and intended as a rice-husking station. During World War II, the Risiera was a Nazi concentration camp used to detain and kill political dissidents and as a transit depot for Jews on their way to Auschwitz. Cremation spaces, the only ones built in Italy, were installed by Erwin Lambert, a SS operative and a stone mason on daily life.

Historians estimate that more than 3,000 people were executed at the Risiera camp. Thousands were interned there and shipped out to other death camps. Most prisoners were from the Friuli region in Italy and parts of Slovenia.

Boris Pahor, a world-famous novelist from Trieste, was imprisoned in the Risiera and later held for several years in the death-camp system. He survived and lived to be 100. The Risiera was designated Stalag 339. In October 1943, it became a Police Detention Camp. It was a transit depot, property storage, and death camp for Jews.

The entrance to the Risiera was an underground passage. The first room was the "death cell." Prisoners earmarked for execution were kept here, often sharing the cell with the bodies of those already executed and awaiting cremation. There were workshops for prisoner workers, SS quarters, and two cells reserved for torture.

When the torture cells were not being used, they held property and valuables taken from the prisoners. The inner courtyard housed the cremation ovens. The crematorium and its chimney were destroyed by the Nazis in 1945. They were trying to hide evidence. They did not succeed.

The Risiera, today San Sabba Risiera Civic Museum is open every day from 9 am to 7 pm. It is closed for only two days each year, 25 December and 1 January.