ROME (JTA) – Italy’s Jewish leaders paid tribute to as many as 2,500 anti-fascist Carabinieri military police deported to death camps by the Nazis in 1943.

Rome Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni; President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities Renzo Gattegna; and other Jewish leaders took part in a ceremony held at Carabinieri barracks in Rome on Monday marking the 70^th anniversary of the deportation, which took place on Oct. 7, 1943.

These Carabinieri, Union of Italian Jewish Communities said in a statement, “did not bow their heads before Nazi-fascism.”

The deportation of the Carabinieri, long neglected by historians, took place just nine days before the Nazi occupiers rounded up more than 1,000 Roman Jews on Oct. 16, 1943 and deported them to Auschwitz. According to some historians, the Nazis deported the Carabinieri in part to prevent them from fighting the round-up of Roman Jews.