The camp was established on 18 September 1943, just ten days after the armistice, in a former Alpini barracks of the Royal Italian Army near the Borgo railway station. German authorities ordered all non-Italian nationals in the area to present themselves to the occupation authorities. With the help of local Italians, many Jewish refugees managed to hide, but 349 people -- 201 men and 148 women -- either came forward or were captured. Many were caught by soldiers of the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler while trying to cross the border at Ventimiglia. These refugees had fled from across Europe: 119 from Poland, and others from France, the Soviet Union, Germany, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Greece. All had believed Italy would protect them.

Conditions at Borgo San Dalmazzo were less brutal than at many comparable camps. Inmates received medical treatment at the hospitals of Borgo and Cuneo, and several people escaped successfully without conditions worsening for those who remained. On 9 November 1943, the Jews of Italian nationality were released, for reasons that remain unclear. But on 21 November, on orders from the Gestapo office in Nice, the 328 non-Italian Jews still held at the camp were taken to the railway station, loaded into freight cars, and transported to either Fossoli di Carpi or Drancy in France. Among them were 41 people recovering in the hospital at Borgo. The staff at Cuneo hospital, however, protected and hid their patients, refusing to surrender them. That act of defiance saved lives.

In three stages -- 7 December, 17 December, and 27 January -- the prisoners at Fossoli and Drancy were deported to Auschwitz. It is estimated that between twelve and eighteen of those formerly held at Borgo survived to see liberation. After the November deportations, the camp briefly closed, then reopened under the Cuneo Police Department, which continued arresting Jewish refugees under German orders. Twenty-six more people, mostly women, were taken and sent to Fossoli on 13 January 1944, then on to Auschwitz on 22 February. Even after the camp permanently closed, persecution continued. Six Jewish refugees captured as late as March and April 1945 were executed near Cuneo by soldiers of the Fascist Black Brigades on 25 April 1945 -- the very day partisans liberated the town.

The victims' identities are well documented. There were slightly more men (209) than women (166). Seventy-eight were under 21 years old; the youngest was less than a year old. Seventy-six were over 70. Between 12 and 18 people -- less than five percent -- survived the Holocaust. No trace of the camp itself remains in Borgo San Dalmazzo, but in 2006 a memorial was erected at the railway station, the platform from which the deportation trains departed. It lists the name, age, and country of origin of each victim, and the names of the few who lived. Freight cars similar to those used in the deportations are preserved nearby. The memorial insists on specificity: not statistics but individuals, not a number but a child under one year old, an elderly person over seventy, a family from Poland, a refugee from Greece. Each name on the platform represents a person who trusted that Italy would be different.