Vishnu Raghavan

Note: This article contains descriptions of violence, torture, genocide, and death.

After World War II, Italians associated with Mussolini and the dictatorship did not undergo criminal trials as far-reaching, prominent, or punishing as those faced by the Nazis at Nuremberg. Additionally, Italian anti-Jewish legislation emerged much later than similar laws in Nazi Germany, with the passage of the Italian Racial Laws in 1938. As a result, the crimes of those in the Mussolini regime during the 1930s and 1940s have received less attention than those of the German Nazis. Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, a political scientist at the University of New England, attempts to mitigate this lack in his book, Genocide in Libya: Shar, a Hidden Colonial History. Genocide in Libya is the only comprehensive study of the Libyan Holocaust, a genocide perpetrated by the forces of Italian leader Benito Mussolini between 1929 and 1934. Ahmida notes that the Libyan genocide and the smaller-scale Ethiopian genocide perpetrated by the Italians, the latter under general Rodolfo Granziani, were just as violent and targeted as the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust. Ahmida utilizes Italian, British, German, and Libyan archival sources to argue that 110,000 Libyans were interned by fascist Italian authorities in sixteen concentration camps, and at least 70,000 Libyans were murdered during the five-year period.

In order to demonstrate the connection between Fascist Italy’s colonial expansion and that of the Nazis, Ahmida begins by quoting Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the Libyan genocide as a colonial genocide. He then notes that Heinrich Himmler and other senior officials of the Nazi brass — the same officials who would order the Final Solution only a couple dozen months later — visited Libya and learned from the Italians. The Nazis learned techniques of settler-colonialism, concentration of natives, and genocidal activities from the Italians, with 150 SS officers training at the Italian Colonial Office in Rome prior to the Nazi Holocaust. Ahmida expertly links the two imperial fascist regimes, dismantling colonial myths regarding Italian imperialism. For instance, the Italians built infrastructure in the desert only for the purpose of transporting the native population to sixteen concentration camps along the coastline. Likewise, the Germans did not industrialize Poland, and the construction of the railway lines were destined to transport the Poles to extermination camps.

Not only does Ahmida rely on extensive Italian and British archival sources, but he also draws from on diaries of Libyans who were interned or massacred and their descendants. Many survivors were elderly by the time the interviews were conducted, yet they had vivid memories of the sixteen Italian concentration camps. One survivor, Yusuf Sa’id al-Bal’azi, said that he was interned because he provided sugar and food to the Sannusiya, the main group which resisted Italian fascist colonization. However, he did not target Italian settlers. In the camps, he was starved on meager rations, despite the fact that he had not committed any crime. A fellow survivor, Ali Majidal-Aquri, did not feed the resistance — though he admits that other tribal members did — yet he was still interned. Both survivors point out that there was no process to determine which civilians collaborated with the Sannusiya as all were assumed to be guilty, and all were driven out of their villages to concentration camps on the coast. 

The journey to the concentration camps was particularly brutal on the internees, as there were seldom trains available. Therefore, Libyans were marched across the desert by foot. The Abaidat tribe was forced at gunpoint to march 1,100 kilometers during a harsh Libyan winter to the concentration camp of Braiga, presumably near Sirte, in the north. The Italian army was given orders to shoot any person or animal who dared to slow down in their march toward the camps. The survivors narrate harrowing tales of brutal punishment by the colonial Askari soldiers, Eritreans and Libyans who worked for the Italians, who whipped and shot people and animals who stopped or fell unconscious due to old age or exhaustion during the weeks-long trail of Rihlan. In the case of the Abaidat and Marmarica tribes, the journey took months and resulted in frequent deaths of the victims. One survivor of the Agaila concentration camp, Ibrahim al-Arabi al-Ghmari al-Maimmuni, described his ordeal in stark terms: “We were deported from the camp of Diryana to Benghazi without food and water. The following day, they put us in a small boat and were ordered to sit in the back and the lower level of the boat.” He and his family were starved upon reaching Benghazi. 

Ahmida points out that the conditions of the concentration camps were as deplorable as the concentration camps and ghettos in Europe under the rule of the Nazis. Not only were the rations meager, but there were anywhere from 100 to 150 executions per day at these camps. Additionally, Italian soldiers did not take any measures to stop diseases like tuberculosis from spreading among the internees. Other less severe but nonetheless damaging diseases were also very prevalent. For example, Muhammad ‘Usman al-Shami, an 11-year-old internee, testified that he only had one shirt, no shoes, and no soap; he became infected with lice and bedbugs as a result. Violence and hunger were also widespread. An anonymous female survivor told Ahmida how she was whipped and tied to a pole at the Agaila camp for a whole day, her battered children next to her. Another anonymous survivor stole grain from ants and ate them. The Italians refused to feed the Libyans adequately, confiscating or slaughtering their animals including their camels, which were a great source of cultural pride for Libyans.

Ahmida is very clear in pointing out that such atrocities were not committed solely by lower-level officials, but that a campaign existed among the highest levels of the fascist regime to exterminate as many Libyans as possible. In Barqa alone, 20,000 Libyans were sent to camps in 1930. Senior Italian officials including Benito Mussolini, Governor of Libya Marshall Pietro Badoglio, Minister of Culture Emilio De Bono, and Senior General Rodolfo Graziani expressed a clear desire to kill and/or displace Libyans in order to repopulate Libya with Italian settlers. Ahmida argues that letters from Graziani to Mussolini and De Bono demonstrate that the Italians wished to detain and execute as many Libyans as possible, without ever determining who had collaborated with the resistance. This is demonstrated by the fact that even Libyans who collaborated with the Italians were shot by fascist troops. Graziani himself announced that he would see to the destruction of Cyrenaica (eastern Libya), as did Badoglio and Mussolini. Ahmida points out that those leaders would apply the tactics and lessons learned in their genocide of nearly three-quarters of a hundred thousand Libyans to commit atrocities of similar scope in Ethiopia, and later in both Yugoslavia and Greece. 

To add to the tragedy of this genocide, there has been little to no justice for the victims. Ahmida argues that while the crimes of Nazi Germany are well-known and that many of the perpetrators were brought to justice at the Nuremberg Trials, no equivalent exists for the Italian-perpetrated Libyan genocide. In fact, in Italy, the post-war government did everything possible to silence the twin fascist genocides of Libya and Ethiopia. Fascist officials who gained roles within the new government destroyed records from the Italian archives and whitewashed the years of fascism. Such whitewashing still continues among the Italian right even in present-day, with some apologists of fascism arguing the Italians were more humane than the Germans in the 1930s and 1940s. However, as Ahmida demonstrates, the genocide in Libya deserves scholarly and popular attention for its scale, brutality, and lack of justice for its victims.

Photo by Nothing Ahead

Vishnu Raghavan is a second-year MA student in the Global, International, and Comparative History program, specializing in the history of modern Europe. He speaks English, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and Portuguese at different levels, and is originally from Seattle, Washington. He completed his BS in political science at Arizona State University, graduating in 2023 with full honors, summa cum laude.