On the building between the Sant Angelo church and the Shoah Foundation Museum, a street sign reads: Largo 16 ottobre 1943, deportazione degli ebrei di Roma. This sign was placed in 2002 to commemorate the roundup of the 1024 Roman Jews by German Nazi soldiers.

On another side of the building, another plaque was placed on 23 October 1964. This plague marks the place where the hunt for Jews began and 2091 Romans were deported in Nazi camps, alongside 6.000 other Italians. The second paragraph of the plague says that the few who survived the massacres and the many people in solidarity ask the Jews for love and peace and God for forgiveness and hope.

From 5.30 on that Saturday the German troops together with the Italian police rounded up the Jewish ghetto. Families were gathered in their homes, and 1259 Jews were arrested and brought to the square. Mischlinge (half-Jews) and Jews of foreign families were released. The rest were put onto trucks and taken to the Tiburtina train station, where they were forced into the cattle wagons and deported to Auschwitz. They named this day the ‘Ghetto Massacre’. Only 16 of those deported survived, including a single woman called Settima Spizzichino.

On the streets near the square of the Jewish ghetto, numerous Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) were placed in front of the last homes of the deportees. Rome was the first Italian city to install stolpersteines, with the first stone placed in January 2010. On Via della Reginella, just a three-minute walk from the square, a lot of stolpersteine can be found. Among them, three for the family of Settima Spizzichino: her mother Grazia di Segni and her sisters Ada and Giuditta Spizzichino.

Settima was immediately subjected to one of Mengele’s experiments after arriving at Auschwitz and later endured a death march to Bergen-Belsen. She talked to countless schools about her experience and passed away in 2000.