the barracks at Fossoli
The danger of
travelling as a tourist is to visit a place to say you have been there without
having an intention for your experience.
It is just as foolish to travel and deny that you are merely a visitor. I have been lucky in my both of my stays in
Italy that I have had professors, American and Italian, who want us to understand
what we are seeing, who give historical and social context to what we see. We have readings and discussions about our subjects
in a classroom, but they are preparation for the incredible field studies we
experience.
Equally important
is having an enthusiastic tour guide.
A few days
before the National Celebration for the Day of Liberation in Italy, my history
class visited the town of Carpi, a museum and monument to the plight of Jews during
the Holocaust and to the concentration camp at Fossoli. A student from another class asked me, “Italy
had concentration camps?” Our knowledge
of history is often diluted to the basic facts of winner and loser, good and
bad. Italy had been Fascist. But what happened after Mussolini had been
unclear to me. But there were camps in
Italy, prison camps and centers for the collection and transporting of Jews
from 1943-45. From these camps in
northern Italy, they went to Auschwitz.
Over and over,
our tour guide, Maria, showed us how we can remember things in certain ways as
to remove blame. Americans learn about
the awfulness of Nazis and to fear Stalin’s communism, but we rarely and
briefly talk about the internment camps in the U.S. for Japanese Americans. Maria told us that Italians also “forget”
about the camps in Italy, and blame the Germans. But she says they must remember, must accept responsibility,
or the same thing can happen again.
The camp at
Fossoli was established first by Italians for British prisoners of war and then
for the interment of Jews. In March 1944
it was taken over by the Germans, but until then it was under the control of
Italian Fascists. Now the camp is a
place for people to come and learn about what happened here. Maria tells us about its history, and daily
life. It was difficult, but not as bad
as the camps in Germany and Poland. She
says that here, in Fossoli, there was still hope, still a chance to talk with
family outside, to receive food. She
told us that the food here was prepared by others being held in the camp and so
it was made with care. Prisoners
remember the food being good, but it was not from ingredients or seasonings but
because here, people still could take care of each other. Jews and political prisoners were held here,
in separate barracks. She spoke about
Odorao Focherini, who helped provide false identity cards for Italian Jews so
they might escape to Switzerland. He was
captured and sent to Fossoli in 1944, eventually dying of a leg wound in
Hesbruek. Only after telling his story
did she tell us that he was her grandfather.
names of victims of the Holocaust
at a Synagogue in Prague
a similar monument exists for Italians
at the museum in Carpi
The museum in the center of Carpi is a solemn
building made mostly of symbols. The
architect was a survivor of a concentration camp. Though many believe there is little you can
do to relay the experience there, there are objects and words to invoke how one
might have felt, and to understand the process through which the Nazis dehumanized
the Jews, removing their individual identities and creating an efficient method
for dealing with thousands of people by turning them into one faceless mass. There are words carved into the walls from
Jews who were captured, some who survived, and from many who were killed in
camps.
looking out from the camp
Throughout this
our guide remained energetic, posing questions to us to have us consider the
psychological methods of the Nazis, their reasoning and the disturbingly efficient
system they created. More than a
demonstration of right and wrong, Maria’s talk offered us ways to understand
why and how this happened. So that maybe
we would be able to prevent this from ever happening again. By considering process and not simply labeling
Nazis as evil monsters, the story becomes more complicated but also closer to
us.
At the end of
the day, a student asked our guide how she remained positive. She seems to have such love and joy, and energy,
even though the stories she tells of the camp are terrible and sad. She says that she sees the good that people
tried to do to help others, like her grandfather did, that there can still be
good things done even against the worst imaginable. That is what she wants us to remember.
