My first clue came when my daughter studied in Italy when she was a junior in high school. We took a family trip to pick her up in May 2006. She had the most wonderful host family in the small town of Fossoli near Carpi. Her Italian "Dad" took us to a local Nazi concentration camp in Fossoli and it struck me at the time "what in the world is a Nazi concentration camp doing here in this small town in Italy?" Before that, I didn't know the Nazis were exterminating the Jews in Italy, too.
This article helps piece the entire story together.
The Final Solution even reached all the way into Africa, where several hundred Jews from Libya were killed, and to the Jewish community on the island of Rhodes, off the coast of Turkey.
Bookmark post 23
The Germans moved into Italy around 1943, when they realized the Italian Fascists weren't that hot to arrest and imprison Italian Jews. There are two movies that portray the actions of Catholics in Italy to shelter Jews, or help them get out of Italy. One is "The Scarlet and the Black", starring Gregory Peck, about a priest running a rescue operation out of the Vatican. The other is "The Assisi Underground", starring Ben Cross about a Franciscan priest running a rescue operation involving private citizens, and convents and monasteries around Assisi.