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JewishHistoryעברית

Rome roundup of 16 October 1943

Date
16 October 1943 – 18 October 1943Hebrew date: 17th of Tishrei, 5704 – 19th of Tishrei, 5704
Location
RomeItaly
Then part of
German-occupied Rome
Perpetrators
  • SS (State)
Killed (estimate)
1,000 – 1,023[1]Jews seized on 16 October 1943 and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. USHMM states that after several days the SS deported more than 1,000 Jews from this roundup and that almost all were killed there. The Shoah Memorial in Milan records that the first RSHA convoy left Rome on 18 October and arrived on 23 October with 1,023 Italian Jews. EHRI gives 1,020 Jews on the train that left Rome on 18 October. Subsequent roundups, not counted here, deported about another 800 Roman Jews according to USHMM.
Locality

8.3% – 8.5% of the Jewish population of Rome[1]

Worldwide

0.0091% – 0.0093% of the worldwide Jewish population (c. 1945)[5]

Expelled (estimate)
No reliable estimate
Category
Expulsion, Genocide
Confidence
High

Summary

After German forces occupied Rome in September 1943, the commander of the Security Police and SD levied a gold ransom on the Jewish community, which was delivered; deportations followed anyway. On 16 October 1943 German police rounded up Jews across the city, including in the former ghetto, and held them at a military college. Two days later the first deportation train left for Auschwitz-Birkenau. USHMM puts those deported from this roundup at more than 1,000 of about 12,000 Jews then in Rome; subsequent arrests raised the Roman total to about 1,800. Most of those deported were murdered. Over 10,000 Jews in Rome survived, many in hiding.

Sources

  1. Rome. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  2. Italy. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  3. The timeline from 1922 to 1945. Fondazione Memoriale della Shoah di Milano
  4. The Persecution of the Italian Jews under Fascist rule. EHRI Online Course in Holocaust Studies

Jewish population (estimates)

  • Worldwide: 11,000,000[5]c. 1945DellaPergola's core estimate for 1 May 1945, matching the 11 million figure he and the 1948–49 Year Book use for the immediate postwar world total.
  • Rome: 12,000[1]Jews living in Rome at the German occupation of the city in early September 1943, about five weeks before the 16 October roundup. USHMM gives the figure as approximately 12,000.

Sources for population estimates

  1. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank (2025)
  2. Sergio DellaPergola, Notes toward a Demographic History of the Jews. Genealogy 8(1) (2024)
  3. Jewish Population of Europe in 1933. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  4. Jewish Population of the World. American Jewish Year Book 1948–1949, via Berman Jewish Policy Archive (1949)
  5. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Voluntary Conversions and Diaspora: A Human Capital Interpretation of Jewish History. American Economic Association annual meeting paper (2007)
  6. Jews in the USSR (1926–1959). Demographic Changes. JewishGen Belarus SIG (table compiled from the 1939 All-Union census)
  7. Mandate for Palestine. Report of the Mandatory to the League of Nations (Palestine Administration, 1922). United Nations UNISPAL (British mandatory report) (1922)
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  9. The Contagion of Violence. 1391 and the Jews of the Spanish Kingdoms. Palgrave / Springer chapter (preview) (2021)
  10. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, Religious Norms, Human Capital, and Money Lending in Jewish European History. Handbook chapter PDF via zvi-eckstein.com
  11. Sergio DellaPergola, Some Fundamentals of Jewish Demographic History. Berman Jewish Policy Archive (PDF) (2001)
  12. Maristella Botticini and Zvi Eckstein, THE CHOSEN FEW: HOW EDUCATION SHAPED JEWISH HISTORY, 70–1492 (book summary). Bar-Ilan University Economics seminar PDF (Princeton University Press forthcoming summary)
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  20. Sergio DellaPergola, World Jewish Population, 2024. American Jewish Year Book 2024, via Berman Jewish DataBank / Israel CBS host (2025)
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  37. Davis Trietsch, Die Juden der Türkei. Länder und Völker der Türkei, Heft 8 (Leipzig) (1915)
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  46. France. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  47. Belgium. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  48. Norway. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  49. Denmark. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  50. Greece. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  51. Lithuania. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  52. German Jews during the Holocaust, 1939–1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Holocaust Encyclopedia
  53. Statistics of Jews (World and US Jewish Population). American Jewish Year Book 1946–1947, via Berman Jewish DataBank (1947)
  54. Jacqueline Shields, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Jewish Virtual Library
  55. Lebanon Virtual Jewish History Tour. Jewish Virtual Library
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