Letizia Anticoli 1914 - 1945

Born 30.8.1914 in Viterbo
Died 12.5.1945 in Mauthausen

Biography

Letizia Anticoli’s family consisted of her father Emanuele, her mother Reale die Veroli, and Angelo, Rachele, Giuditta and Rina. At the time of her arrest, Letizia was already married to Angelo Di Porto. Her son Silvano, just five years old at the time, was saved from deportation by the quick thinking of a family friend, who passed him off as her own son.

Letizia and her family were subject to the Race Laws of 1938 and lost their jobs. But fortunately they lived in a small town, in Viterbo, where somehow it was possible for them to carry on working. Above all the citizens of Viterbo acted as if they didn’t know they were Jewish. In December 1943 Letizia was arrested along with other members of her family and taken to the Santa Maria prison in Gradi, where she remained until being transported to the Fossoli transit camp, probably in February 1944.

Letizia left Fossoli on 6 April 1944 for Auschwitz. About 230 men and women from this transport were registered there, Letizia among them. We know little of the months Letizia spent in Auschwitz. But we do know that the camp was gradually evacuated from mid-January 1945 onwards. Thousands of men and women, who had survived thus far, were taken to the concentration camps scattered across Germany.

Letizia was one of them and came to Mauthausen, where she remained until liberation. Just a short time later, however, utterly exhausted, she could hold on no longer. Letizia died on 12 May 1945 in Mauthausen. Her father Emanuele and her husband Angelo also vanished in the hell of the camps.

Grazia Di Veroli

 

ANED, Rome section

 

Translation into English: Joanna White

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