“At midnight of December 5-6 [1943], after blowing the lock, the fascists, accompanied by Questura agents and plain clothes carabinieri, entered the Aged Care House […] and took away all the inmates except for nine old women who could not be transported and the care taker, Amalia De Bei. All those taken from their homes and those taken from the Aged Care House were first trasported to the Marco Foscarini headquarters, a temporary prison without beds. They were forced to sleep on benches (even Mrs. Annetta Vivante, 88 years old) and left without food”.
“On the night of August 17 [1944] there was a raid by an S.S. squad led by the spy Mauro Grini, a renegade […] In the middle of the night, with cunning and violence, he opened the door of the Aged Care House. Shots rang out and panic spread through the old hospice. The SS was brutal and cruel, and in the blink of an eye they took all of them (22 people), except for 8 or 9 inmates (all women, minus one man) who were not transportable; they pushed them through the ghetto with rifle kicks; a long, tragic procession of people exhausted by pain and fear, led by the stately figure of the blind rabbi Dr. Ottolenghi […]”.
“Storia degli ebrei rinchiusi nella casa israelitica di ricovero e da lì deportati in massa” – Archivio Fondazione CDEC, Fondo CRDE, b. 2, fasc. 48 (http://digital-library.cdec.it/cdec-web/viewer/cdecxDamsHist026/IT-CDEC-ST0026-000246#page/49/mode/1up)
