The Ashkenazi oratory and the kosher dining hall that had been annexed to the Delegation for the Assistance of Jewish Emigrants (DELASEM) headquarters were the first to be ruined in the July 1942 attack.
Horitzky-Orsini describes how the vandals despoiled the oratory: benches and the ark containing sacred texts were overturned and smashed, prayer books were torn and scattered, and lamps, glass and furnishings were shattered, “so that in a few moments the temple was reduced to a heap of scrap”. In the atrium, a marble plaque with the names of the Jewish community’s benefactors was crushed, and several objects, including a carpet, were taken away. One photograph shows the overturned benches with books scattered on the floor. The second photograph provides a different point of view on the same hall.
 |  | |
Photograph of the via del Monte Ashkenazi oratory after the July 1942 devastation
| Photograph of the via del Monte Ashkenazi oratory after the July 1942 devastation
|
The seat of the DELASEM was devastated as well. DELASEM was founded on 1 December 1939, but organizations for helping Jewish refugees had been active in Trieste since the early 1920s. The Trieste branch of DELASEM was directed by Giuseppe Fano (1881-1972) and its task was to help foreign Jewish refugees emigrate to Palestine; in the 1941-1942 period, the Trieste committee had been especially involved in aiding refugees from Ljubljana and Croatia. At the DELASEM headquarters “some doors were crashed and more than a hundred glass plates shattered. A desk was thrown into the street and its contents dispersed”. The plates of glass mentioned here may have been photographic plates to be used in obtaining documents for emigrants.
 |
Plaque commemorating the activities of the DELASEM and Trieste's role as “The Gate to Zion” (Sha’ar Zion), Trieste, via del Monte 7
|