San Domino: the mythical gay island in Italy that Benito Mussolini could not control and got out of hand

During Fascism in Italy, a period governed by the dictator Benito Mussolini, president of the Council of Ministers from 1922 to 1943; later becoming Duce from 1943 to 1945, homosexuality was severely persecuted and imprisoned on the island of Domino in the Adriatic Sea.

In addition to the horrendous racial laws that severely limited the civil rights of Italian Jews, along with other ethnic minoritieshomosexuals had a devastating impact during fascism.

Seen as the opposite of traditional male ideals, homosexuals in fascist Italy were subjected to discrimination and oppressionalthough technically there were no laws prohibiting consensual relationships between people of the same sex.

How homosexuals were brought to Domino Island

The Italian dictator believed that homosexuality was a vice imported from other countries and he did not want to officially recognize an activity which he considered fundamentally incompatible with a strong and virile fascist country.

“Fascism had a particular interest in spreading the myth of stereotyped Italian manhoodexplained researcher Tommaso Giartosio, author of the 2006 book, The city and the islandwhich explores the internal exile of gays on the island of San Domino in fascist Italy.

In 1938 the mayor of Catania, in Sicily, wrote: “we observe that many public dances, beaches and mountain places welcome many of these sick homosexualsand that young people from all walks of life seek his company. “He believed that his city should” contain at least that sexual aberration that offends morality and is disastrous for public health and the betterment of the race. “

So in the same year the mayor and the local police gathered 45 homosexuals from the area and deported them to San Domino.archipelago of the Tremiti Islands in the Adriatic Sea, two hours by ferry from the central coast of southern Italy.

Researcher Michel Ebner, of the University of Cambridge, published The fascist archipelagoa book in which he emphasized it “Mussolini considered homosexuality a foreign vice imported from Germany or England and had nothing to do with Italy”.

Italians are too sexist for homosexuals

Benito Mussolini

Italian fascist

For this reason, in 1930 the Minister of Justice of the Mussolini regime, Alfredo Rocco, developed the legal code in which homosexuality was punished as a crime.

However, Benito Mussolini’s response, after reading it, was unusual. He stated: “Italians are too sexist for homosexualsThe Duce was convinced that criminalizing homosexual practices was promoting them, which questioned the virility of his ideals.

Gay life in San Domino

There are no known survivors of the San Domino landfill, which were there between 1938 and 1943, but investigators note that they arrived there handcuffed and were placed in bedrooms without running water or electricity.

Various documents have been found. For instance, the men wrote letters complaining about the shame their arrests had caused their families and there was also a mandatory curfew at 8pmthen they were locked in their bedrooms.

Although Mussolini used other Italian islands to confine his political prisoners, San Domino remained Mussolini’s gay island, reserved exclusively for them. Despite their harsh living conditions, in a way homosexuals could live out their sexual identity more openly than in their own cities.

An inhabitant of San Domino, Giovanni B. alias Peppinella, in an interview granted a few years ago to the Italian site Primo Numero, said that “the people who arrived there could not go out on the streets of their country without fear of being harassed by police”.

This was added by Peppinella, also considered homosexual after contacting the inmates “On the island, on the other hand, we celebrated our days or the arrival of someone new. We did theater, and there we could dress as women and nobody said anything“.

The homosexuals who went to San Domino had no running water or electricity, they were required to do hard labor, but were allowed to go out during the day. None of the population mistreated them. This is also told by other inhabitants of San Domino in an episode of the “Invitation au voyage” program of the French chain ArteTv.

“The San Domino islanders often welcomed those nicknamed into their homes female (Italian slang term to indicate homosexuals). Without having to lie or hide, during their exile they enjoyed a tolerance they had not known anywhere else in Italy. They could, for example, disguise themselves without fear of reprisals. All this, however, away from all his affections and remaining in exile ».

Confined people also worked as barbers, shoemakers, and tailors and, according to the records of the timethey received four lire a day as compensation.

This interlude with a certain freedom, despite the segregation, was maintained by the community and by solidarity among the marginalized. It all ended after the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

That year the prisoners were sent home, far from the surprising freedom they had enjoyed in San Domino, a kind of prison that Mussolini dreamed of as a homosexual nightmare, but which was not entirely one.

There are also documents that several fascist guards have left their manly ideals, their cries and eccentricities to fall defeated into the arms of the island’s inmates. However, Most of the people who passed through San Domino never heard from again.