The tragedy of the Shoah also reaches Imperia and its surroundings: the numbers speak for themselves.
On the Western Riviera of Liguria, in the 1920s, there was an initial immigration of Jews from Northern Italy dictated by the best climatic characteristics and the many job opportunities, which lasted until the 1930s, when the Jewish communities of the Central European countries move following the political rise of Adolf Hitler.
The situation remained under control for only a few years, so much so that a census started in Sanremo in 1938 numbered 260 Jews, 160 of them of foreign nationality. However, peace was shattered by the promulgation of the fascist racial laws: it began on 5 September 1938 with the prohibition, for Jews, of teaching and study in Italian public schools, or of free teaching in universities; then two days later the decree is published that foreign Jews residing in Italy are obliged to leave the country within six months of the date of publication. In the coming months, the restrictive decrees against the Jewish population will multiply.
The real terror, however, began on 18 November 1943 in Bordighera, with the arrest of the Hassan family, and then passed to the nights of 25 and 26 of the same month, during which thirty-five Jews were arrested in Ventimiglia, Bordighera and Sanremo.
The victims of this first raid, carried out by the men of the SS and the agents of the fascist police, were locked up in the prisons of Imperia and Sanremo and, consequently, transported to Genoa.
In addition, a real camp was built in Vallecrosia, with opening dated February 1944 and closing in August of the same year. Mainly political prisoners and parents of draft dodgers are interned.
In those years, 187 Jews were deported from the west of Liguria.
Only five come back alive.
The majority of them are registered in Sanremo, 73 people. Then follow Imperia (50), Bordighera (25), Ventimiglia (15), Taggia (9), Diano Marina and Pieve di Teco (4), Isolabona (3), Camporosso, Dolcedo and Vallecrosia (1).