Hotel Regina and Metropoli

Command headquarter of the SIPO-SD and the Gestapo, under the command of Theodor Saevecke.

Between 10th and 12th September 1943, in Milan, the hotel “Regina” was occupied by departments of the division Waffen SS – Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. On 13th September the place was seized by the Nazis, surrounded by barbed wire, with casemates made of reinforced concrete and illuminated at night by powerful photoelectric cells. It was the headquarter of the  Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitdienst (SIPO-SD, Police and Security Service of the SS) – the most sophisticated information agency at the service of the German police apparatus in Italy –  and of the Gestapo, the political police under the command of the SIPO.

Soon, within the system of the nazi police, the “Regina” became one of the main centers for the arrest, seizure, interrogation and torture of partisans, Jews and civilians suspected of collaborating with the Resistance, and operated in close connection with the police and armed forces of the Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI).

The interregional headquarter of the SIPO-SD which included Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria was assigned to colonel Walter Rauff, while the interprovincial one was assigned to Theodor Saevecke, in charge of the Aussenkommando (subcamp) of Milan, and responsible for the coordination of the anti-partisan repression and hunt for the Jews.

The victims, once arrested, were brought to the last floor of hotel Regina, in the security cells, subjected to long interrogation and torture sessions, later locked up in San Vittore – operating under the command of the “Regina” – and eventually interrogated again. In some cases, the victims were directly sent to the platform number 21 of the Stazione Centrale to be deported on the basis of the lists prepared in the headquarter of the SS.

On 30th April 1945, after twenty months of occupation, the SS – protected by American tanks and with partisans’ guns pointing directly at them – eventually left Hotel Regina.

After the war, the atrocities of colonel Rauff and captain Saevecke remained unpunished: the former escaped from the concentration camp in Rimini and died in Chile in 1984; the latter was put on trial only in 1999 by the Military Court of Turin and sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for being the creator and commander of the SIPO-SD of Milan and for requesting and organizing the massacre of Piazzale Loreto.
We had to wait for the 27th January 2010 for a commemorative plate to be affixed to the facade of the building.
Roberta Cairoli