The northern Italian city of Turin and its adjacent countryside in the Piedmont area of Italy hosted several large DP camps as well as numerous hachsharot. The DP camp in Turin proper increased from 950 DPs at the end of 1946, to approximately 2,000 by the middle of the next year. Palese, the largest DP center in Italy, housed 3,200 DPs in a network of several hachsharot and kibbutzim in March 1947, just months after a riot against British immigration restrictions to Palestine occurred there in the summer 1946.
Grugliasco, a town southwest of Turin, organized a school, a synagogue with a new Torah scroll, and a library that received newspapers in English and German. With help from the Joint, ORT opened several workshops in the Turin-area camps, training DPs in various industries, including knitting and leather tanning. The Joint also opened a newborn and infants hospital and a kitchen in the Turin camp.
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