Internee Number 6

Description

 Internee Number 6 is the earliest known memoir written in a Fascist internment camp in Italy. First published in Rome in 1944 while war still raged in northern Italy, Maria Eisenstein’s intimate account captures life in a women’s concentration camp and the looming shadow of Nazi persecution. Written with such humor and remarkable literary grace in the author’s fourth language, Italian, that it was initially believed to be a work of fiction, this extraordinary document illuminates a little-known chapter of Holocaust history: internment in Fascist Italy.

Through a vivid cast of characters—her fellow internees—Eisenstein reveals life and humanity in imprisonment. The women play cards, philosophize, dream of men, scheme against their captors, and yearn for love and freedom. Amid moments of humor and occasional farce, they struggle with isolation, betrayal, and loss. Through it all runs the thread of Eisenstein’s biting irony and sharp observations.

Born in Vienna to Polish-Jewish parents in 1915, Eisenstein was studying literature in Florence when Mussolini ordered the arrest of all Jews without Italian citizenship. After her imprisonment in Lanciano from 1940 to 1941, she fled to the mountains following the 1943 armistice and eventually reached Allied-controlled territory. She later worked for the Allies’ Psychological Warfare Branch before emigrating to America in 1948, where she lived until her death in 1994.

This first English edition, translated by poet Will Schutt, features essays by historian Carlo Spartaco Capogreco, who rediscovered Eisenstein’s story in 1989, and Eric Feingersh Steele, the author’s son. Eighty years after its creation, this powerful work emerges as both a historical document and a brilliant work of literature.

About the translator

Will Schutt is a poet and translator. His most recent translations include Fabio Pusterla’s Brief Homage to Pluto and Other Poems and Andrea Marcolongo’s Starting from Scratch. He lives in Rome, Italy.