Mario Sonnino, the youngest child of Ida and Settimio Sonnino, was born on May 31, 1941. He had an older brother and an older sister. Like all toddlers, Mario loved to play with his toys, and he adored his brother and his sister. The family lived in Rome, Italy.
The Roman Jewish community is the oldest in the Western world with a continuous existence from ancient times. After World War I, Italian Jewish life regained the prominence it had enjoyed in the past. The Jews of Rome were fully integrated into Italian society and held positions in nearly all professions including the government and the military.
All of this ended in November 1938, when Mussolini, Italy’s dictator, passed antisemitic racial laws. These laws put an abrupt end to most jobs and public education for Jews. Mario’s parents were devastated, both economically and emotionally. They struggled to make a living and cope with these drastic changes.
Mario was 2 years old in September 1943, when the Germans decided to extend the “Final Solution,” their plan to murder all of the Jews in Europe, to Italy. Responding to pressure from Berlin, Italian fascists raided Jewish communities, arrested Jews and deported them to concentration camps in Poland and Germany.
In a surprise raid on October 16, 1943, a rainy Saturday morning, Mario and his family were arrested. Together with over 1,000 other Jews, they were loaded onto trucks and brought to the Military College across from the Vatican. They were held there without beds or sanitary facilities for two days.
On October 18, 1943, Mario and his family were forced into overcrowded cattle cars, without food or water. Five days later, they arrived at Auschwitz Death Camp in Poland, where they were all immediately gassed.
Mario was 2 years old.
Mario was one of 1.5 million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust.
A personal history from the Archives of the SIMON WIESENTHAL CENTER 1991-811 [001]
