After September 8, 1943 and the constitution of the Italian Social Republic, some premises of the National Boarding School “Marco Foscarini” were occupied by Fascist military commands and were used as a temporary detention center for several Jews, especially women and children, captured in the great roundup of 5/6 December 1943, pending deportation to Nazi extermination camps.
Among them was the Grassini family. The father, Raffaele, a butcher, had organised the family’s escape to Switzerland with the help of the Partisan Action Group of Slaughterhouse Workers. They were due to leave on December 6th with a boat covered in the slaughterhouse to San Giuliano, then by car. They had procured false documents.
As they were preparing to leave, the Grassini were warned that their maternal grandparents had been taken away and decided not to go, in order to stay together. The next morning, the family showed up at the Convitto Foscarini, and handed themselves in to the marshal of the carabinieri, who tried unsuccessfully to send them away before the Germans arrived.
The Deputy Commissioner of the Police Headquarters begged them to let go of the children (Angelo, born in 1933, and Mirna, born in 1938), but they did not want to separate. They were convinced they were being taken to work.
Loris Volpato, Angelo’s friend, tells of his family’s friendship with the Grassini. When they learned of their arrest, they went to The Foscarini Boarding School to visit them and bring them food.
One day my mother and aunt Mary decided to visit them and brought me and my sister too. We went to Foscarini, the big room was full of people, a vision that I will never forget. The faces of the people stopped were tense; those of the great expressed concern and fear, the children were tired and in tears. The food and broth flasks we brought served to comfort them; a smile of gratitude flashed into the eyes of those people torn from their homes and unable to make up for it. Meanwhile my mother had found our friends; it was then that a policeman gave her advice: “When she leaves you also take the lady’s little ones”. Unfortunately, their mother didn’t agree to part with them: “I didn’t do anything wrong, why should I deprive myself of my children?
(Testimony of Loris Volpato in : They took them away, 2011)
The Grassini family was first taken to the Fossoli camp and then to Auschwitz.
