Rome's Jewish community commemorates today the 79th anniversary of the deportation of more than 1,000 of the city’s Jews to the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz. The raid occurred at dawn on 16 October 1943, when 1,024 Roman Jews - including 200 children - were rounded up in the city’s Ghetto district and taken across the river Tiber to the Collegio Militare on Via della Lungara.

Two days later they were sent to Auschwitz on a sealed train from Tiburtina station. Only 16 were to make it back to Rome alive: 15 men and one woman, Settimia Spizzichino, who died in the Garbatella neighbourhood in 2000. The white steel bridge connecting the Ostiense and Garbatella districts was named in Spizzichino's honour when it opened in 2012.