The itinerant museum, established with the aim of promoting a culture of peace, nonviolence, and human rights, intends to create a permanent historical-documentary path focused on the phenomenon of Italian internment and political confinement.
It has chosen the city of Lanciano as its reference point, a city that has become a symbol of the fascist concentration camp system, having been the site of a women’s concentration camp as well as a location used to house internees and political detainees during the years of the Second World War.
The museum’s installation consists of the placement of three emotional totems at three different points throughout the city. Their purpose is to bring to life the experiences of women and men subjected to the internment regime through music, narratives, texts, and letters—without interference or commentary.
In addition, the museum employs a bilingual (Italian and English) educational support comprising five display pedestals. These will be positioned near the concentration camp of Villa Sorge (2), within the Parco Tito Grauer along viale Cappuccini (1), in the square where Albergo Vittoria was located (1), and in piazza Plebiscito.
Each totem, designed by art design professionals, will support a specific QR Code that links to a web platform hosting podcasts. These podcasts are produced with the voices of actors under the guidance of Domenico Galasso from the Piccolo Teatro Orazio Costa di Pescara. The totems will be installed on three of the five display pedestals (Villa Sorge, Albergo Vittoria, and piazza Plebiscito).
“I sassi e le ombre” - Stories of Internment and Confinement in Fascist Italy
Despite the timely denunciation of Maria Eisenstein’s L’internata n. 6, a strange oblivion has fallen on the Italian concentration camps, the result of reticent silences and guilty omissions. Too long crushed by the stones of indifference, the shadows of the past take shape through the stories of women and men interned or confined in the lands of Abruzzo. Starting from the women’s camp of Lanciano, where Maria Eisenstein was interned, the book also presents the stories of some important figures of national politics such as Tristano Codignola, Enzo Enriquez Agnoletti, Guido Molinelli, Dino Philipson and Aldo Finzi, almost all of Jewish origin. Using microhistory as an essential contribution to a more effective reading of the historical fact, documents, letters and diaries are analysed which, dwelling on the experiences of people of all social origins, victims of deportation and racial politics, contribute to providing a largely unpublished cross-section of the history of internment and confinement in fascist Italy.
Tito Grauer
