I had an Email exchange with John Calvelli, Pres.,COPMIAO regarding an Italian Jewish Internment Camp during WWII close to his relatives home
in Cosenza, Calabria. I was about to send him information from my "prototype" I-A Internet PORTAL, when it occurred to me that this should be of interest to all.

Four items struck me.

ONE. That the Internees, mostly "transient" Refugees from Eastern Europe were permitted to "run" their "own" internment camp like a "kibbutz", and that the Internees "ate" as well as the neigboring townspeople, and had a more "culturally" rich environment.

TWO.Thomas Craughwell contends that  the settlement camp was
operated by the Vatican, under the protection of two papal emissaries who had set up a kosher kitchen for the residents and established a school for the children.

THREE. A few internees died, a few were born, and the first one (born) was even given the name "Benito" in honor of Mussolini. Professor Benito Erlich is now a consultant in an Israeli hospital.

FOUR. The internees were released BEFORE the fall of Mussolini, thereby saving them from German troops.
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Simon Weisenthal Center

FERRAMONTI DI TARSIA: Internment camp for Jews in southern Italy, established by Benito Mussolini. Between 1940 and 1943, there were about 3,900 Jews there, but they were not starved or murdered like in German concentration camps . In 1943, before the fall of Mussolini, the government released the internees.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center Online - 02153 - FERRAMONTI.CA.FS
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/pages/t021/t02153.html
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Jeruselum Post:

"Ferramonti" a World War II concentration (more of a settlement camp) camp for Jews, was actually a "haven" from the horrors of the German concentration camps.....

"Ferramonti di Tarsia."... is the site of a World War II concentration camp for Jews. Ferramonti is almost unique in another sense, not only in Italy but in the whole of continental Europe. It was a camp which actually became a haven for the internees, a place where they could avoid the horrors of the German concentration camps.....

In September 1943, units of the Fifth British Infantry Division and the Eleventh Canadian Tank Regiment of the Eighth Army liberated Ferramonti as they advanced northward through Calabria. This was the first Axis internment camp to be liberated by the Allies, and the biggest Italian one. There were 2,000 inmates, most of them Jews from Germany and central Europe. But it could hardly have been more different from the ones which were to follow (in Germany). Mussolini had passed anti-Jewish laws in 1938 and began interning foreign Jews as soon as war broke out.

The first "Ferramontini" were Germans, Austrians and Czechs, most of whom had left their own countries after discriminatory laws had been passed there...

From the beginning the Italians allowed internees to regulate the life of the camp. Very soon there was a synagogue and school, an infirmary and a kosher butcher. School report cards were printed up: "Scuola del Campo di Concentramento / Lagerschule."

Contacts with the locals flourished. Domenico Zazzaro, who was thirteen in 1940, still lives within spitting distance of the camp. He remembers, "There was a Czech who came every day to buy milk. He used to take manure as well from the cowsheds for their vegetable plots." [RAA Note:
The Internees came and went from the Camp at will]

But the contacts were not just practical and down-to-earth. Among the internees were specialist doctors...; Hungarian surgeon Ladislao Schwarz even managed to carry out internal skull surgery.

Francesco Marturano from Tarsia remembers how a school friend of his hit him in the eye, blinding him. The local GP did not know what to do and suggested that the family try Ferramonti. "I remember the hut it as if it was today - the second one on the end row on the Tarsia side - and the doctor had little glasses and a pointed beard," he adds, smiling. "I was quickly back to normal." [RAA Note:Townspeople had easy entry]

Culture too was exchanged. Viennese painter Michel Fingsten continued his work in what became known as the "studio-hut," and one of his canvases, a large Martyrdom of Saint Bartholomew, is today the altarpiece in a nearby church....

So inmates who died in the camp, and there were not many, were buried in the Christian graveyard a couple of miles from the camp. It is strange to see tombs with Hebrew inscriptions among the cypresses, with very non-Calabrian names and birthplaces: "Rosa Freidmann, born in Dobropole, 24 October 1879," "Max Mannheim, born in Mosciski, 23 September 1897." That is, apart from one: "Leo Wellesz, born 2 January 1943 at Ferramonti, died 4 April 1943." Little Leo was an exception, though. Other babies born in the camp survived, and the first one was even given the name "Benito" in honor of Mussolini. Professor Benito Erlich is now a consultant in an Israeli hospital.

In...March 1942 )there were almost five hundred new arrivals. They were the survivors of the shipwreck of the "Pentcho", a weird craft with an epic story. [ A converted river boat destined for Isrel from Rumania.]

...Cambridge historian Jonathan Steinberg called, "Ferramonti the largest kibbutz on the European continent." In time, two other synagogues were added to cope with religious differences; there were three levels of schooling (with foreign languages taught from the elementary level, a piece of progress which only reached other Calabrian schools in the 1990s), and a library with thousands of volumes.

There were debates and plays, football matches, chess tournaments and literary competitions. One German Jew told Lord Rennel of the Allied Control Commission immediately after liberation, "The Italians could not be cruel, even if they tried... "

Right from the beginning, regulations were relaxed; there were supposed to be three roll calls a day. Very soon they were reduced to two, then one... In March 1942, the camp commandant was explicit in his policy when he told a visitor, "The internees can do what they want as long as appearances are kept up and I don't get into trouble with the Ministry."

In practice, Ferramonti turned out to be the salvation of the Jews interned there. They spent up to three years there (while sharing the sufferings of the general population, especially cold, malaria and insufficient food). But they were saved from deportation to Germany.

It was, given the circumstances in the rest of Europe, in some respects an idyll. Many Ferramontini stayed in Italy after the war. One even remained in Cosenza, where he founded the town's only publishing house.
...Almost without exception they have very positive memories of Ferramonti...

  The Jerusalem Post Newspaper: Online News From Israel
http://info.jpost.com/C002/Info/Travel/JewishItaly/haven.html
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Pius XII and the Holocaust By Thomas Craughwell

Ferramonti-Tarsia... operated by the Vatican. The residents were refugees from Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, who had been saved by Pius XII's intervention. Their camp was under the protection of two papal emissaries who had set up a kosher kitchen for the residents and established a school for the children.

On October 29, 1944, Jan Hermann and Dr. Max Pereles, the camp elders of Ferramonti-Tarsia, went to the Vatican to present the Pope with a letter of thanks, which read in part:

 
While our brothers were hunted, imprisoned and threatened with death in almost every country in Europe, because they belonged to the Jewish people, Your Holiness has not only sent us large and generous gifts ... but also has shown Your lively fatherly interest in our physical, spiritual and moral well-being. In doing so Your Holiness has as the first and highest authority upon earth fearlessly raised his universally respected voice, in the face of our powerful enemies, in order to defend openly our rights to the dignity of man .... When we were threatened with deportation to Poland, in 1942, Your Holiness extended his fatherly hand to protect us, and stopped the transfer of the Jews interned in Italy, thereby saving us from almost certain death.

Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust By Thomas Craughwell
http://www.cfpeople.org/Apologetics/page51a014.html