72nd anniversary of deportation of Rome’s Jews.

Commemorative events are taking place in Rome on 16 October, 72 years after more than 1,000 of the city’s Jews were deported to the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz.

Speaking during a memorial ceremony at the capital's Great Synagogue in the Jewish Ghetto earlier today, Rome's outgoing mayor Ignazio Marino described the deportation as "one of the most serious wounds ever inflicted on the heart of our city."

The raid occurred at dawn on 16 October 1943, when 1,016 Roman Jews, including 200 children, were rounded up in the city’s Ghetto district and taken across the 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 of them were to return to Rome.