Vitale family papers

Correspondence (8 letters) from Gemma Vitale Servadio, written to friends, family and an attorney, June 1944. Servadio sent these letters from the Fossoli internment camp, after she and her mother, Nina Levi Vitale, were arrested, and prior to their deportation to Auschwitz. Collection also contains the text of a lecture given by Servadio’s brother, Col. Massimo Adolfo Vitale, in 1947, after he observed the trial of Auschwitz camp commandant Rudolf Hoess in Warsaw, and subsequently visited the camp. Gemma Servadio, née Vitale, was born in Turin, Italy, on August 13, 1878. She was arrested in Turin by German forces on May 23, 1944, and sent, along with her mother, Sara “Nina” Vitale, née Levi (August 18, 1855 – June 30, 1944), to the Fossoli internment camp. Both of them were deported to Auschwitz on June 26, 1944, and were gassed on their arrival there. Gemma Servadio had five children, including her daughter Lucia, and son, Lucio, who are mentioned in her letters from Fossoli. Nina Vitale had, in addition to her daughter Gemma, two sons, Enrico and Adolfo. Massimo Adolfo Vitale was born in Turin in 1886, and pursued a career in the Italian Army, rising to the rank of Colonel. As a Jew, he was discharged from the army in 1938, after the introduction of the first racial laws in Italy. He left Italy for Paris, and subsequently for Morocco, where he stayed for the duration of World War II, performing intelligence work for American forces based in Tangier. At the end of the war, Vitale returned to Italy, and founded the Comitato Ricerche Deportati Ebrei (Committee for the Search of Deported Jews), which sought to trace the whereabouts of deported Jews, and when possible, to reunite them with their families. Vitale also interviewed survivors in Italy and compiled data about the deportations. [Source of biographical information: Mirella Shapiro].