Operational from the summer of 1944 and located in buildings previously occupied by the Italian Army, the transit camp hosted about 11,000 prisoners from middle and northern Italy in its ten months of activity.

A portion of the prisoners—approximately 3,500 people of all ages—was transferred to one of the Lagers [clarification needed], while the rest were assigned to work in loco as free labor, either in the camp workshops and labs, in local firms, or in the apple orchards.

The interned prisoners were freed between April 29 and May 3, 1945,[2] when the camp was closed to prevent the advancing Allied troops from witnessing its living conditions and (presumably) to eliminate evidence.

In November 2000, the military court of Verona sentenced Michael Seifert, a Ukrainian SS known in the camp as "Misha", to life in prison in absentia for the atrocities he committed against deportees, particularly those held in the jail block.

The relative recency of this trial is because the case had remained hidden for decades and resurfaced with the discovery of the so-called armadio della vergogna (lit., "cabinet of shame") in 1994.

Among the prisoners that Seifert and his accomplice Otto Sein tortured was a young Mike Bongiorno, an American POW who would go on to become one of Italy's most beloved TV figures after war.