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Jewish Professor Tortured to Death by Gestapo in Rome Prison

May 14, 1944
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Dr. Davide Ginsbourg, a former professor of Russian literature at Turin University, has died as a result of tortures suffered at the hands of the Gestapo in the Regina Coeli prison in Rome, it is reported today by the Swiss Italian-language newspaper Squilla Italica. The paper says that Ginsbourg had been sentenced to five years imprisonment by a special court for anti-Fascist activity.

The Popole Liberta, another Italian-language paper published in Switzerland, today carries details of the massacre of Jews at summer resorts along Lake Maggiore shortly after the Mussolini puppet regime was set up in northern Italy. The paper says that special detachments of trained “Jew-hunters” were sent to the Lake Maggiore region to round up and murder wealthy Jews and steal their possessions.

In one place sixteen Jews, including children were taken from a hotel to the lake-side, where they were machine-gunned and their bodies thrown into the water. For several weeks afterward the bodies floated ashore along the lakefront. Among them were those of two children clasping each other in their arms. The extermination squad stayed 20 days, during which many Jews were deported. After their departure, the bodies of scores of Jews were found in shallow graves in different localities.

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