Giuseppe Di Porto, born in Rome, Italy in 1923, was caught by the SS in October 1943, and deported from Milan. About two months later, he was sent to Auschwitz, where the number 167988 was tattooed on his arm on arrival.
In January 1945, with the approach of the Red Army and the flight of the Germans from the camp, the prisoners, Giuseppe among them, were sent out on a death march. After a three-day march in the snow, the SS men decided that the prisoners were delaying their escape and it would be better to murder them in the forest. Giuseppe managed to escape the slaughter and join up with Red Army forces in the area.
In October 1945, five months after the end of the war, Di Porto returned to his home in Rome. He married Marissa, who was also a Holocaust survivor, and they became the parents of three children.
On the side panel of the suitcase that he found after he escaped from the death march and in which he kept his few belongings, Giuseppe Di Porto wrote down the places and the dates that he passed through from the day of his arrival in Auschwitz until his return to Italy:
| Monovitz (Buna) |
11 December 1943 |
| N. 197988 |
|
| Auschwitz III |
|
| Gliwice, Poland |
24 January 1945 |
| Częstochowa, Poland |
01 February 1945 |
| Gurao, Polonia (apparently Góra Siewierska, Poland) |
25 February 1945 |
| Starnao Polonia (apparently Starnice, Poland) |
02 March 1945 |
| Breslavia, Poland |
19 March 1945 |
| Wołczyn, Poland |
24 March 1945 |
| Głogów, Poland |
16 May 1945 |
| Olesnica |
05 June - 05 September 1945 |
| Rome |
08 October 1945 |
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection,
Donated by Giuseppe Di Porto, Rome, Italy
