Description
Book Synopsis«Multidisciplinary and comparative, Camps of Transit, Sites of Memory brings new materials and approaches to the study of Fascist, wartime and postwar concentration and transit camps in Italy, as well as their legacies. An essential volume for the continuing study of this complex subject.»
(Professor Mia Fuller, University of California, Berkeley)
Camps and places of transit assume relevance in certain contexts and in relation to specific events of the contemporary age: from genocide to voluntary or forced migration, from camps for prisoners of war to the management of refugees in conflicts or catastrophes. In the phases of transition to normality that follow such events, places of transit can be used for different, sometimes opposing purposes, such as the control and/or elimination of certain social groups, or as the protection of persons for humanitarian aims.
This volume investigates the relationship between camps and places of transit from three main perspectives: the history of transit camps in various countries and times; the relationship between such spaces, whose architectural characterization is fragile and difficult to recognize, and the great memorial and symbolic relevance of them; and, finally, the concepts of transit and camp, and changes in the meaning of such places and the memorial and educational practices related to them.
With contributions by Antonis Antoniou, John R. Barruzza, Chiara Becattini, Vando Borghi, Matteo Cassani Simonetti, Francesco Delizia, Robert S. C. Gordon, Ivano Gorzanelli, Hans-Christian Jasch, Borbála Klacsmann, Andrea Luccaroni, Marco Minardi, Roberta Mira, Elena Pirazzoli, Francesca Rolandi, Laurence Schram, Claudio Sgarbi, Andrea Ugolini and Riki Van Boeschoten.
Table of ContentsContents: ‘It Was More Horrible than in Auschwitz’: A Comparative Analysis of the Transit Camps of Monor and Budakalász – Lives in Transit: Scipione Concentration Camp – Hunting for Manpower: Transit Camps for Forced Labour in Nazi- Occupied Italy – Camps for Foreign Refugees in Italy in the Central Decades of the Cold War – A Place in the Mist: The Mysterious Dossin Barracks in Mechelen – Countering Memory with Memorial: Remembering Indifference at the Shoah Memorial of Milan – Memorial Sites at the Border: The Rice Mill of San Sabba and Natzweiler- Struthof – The Caserme Rosse Barracks, from Transit Camp to the Present: Notes about its Architecture – and the Meanings of the Place – Topography as a Memorial Shape: Learning from Transit Sites – The Deviation of a Modernist Project: From Cité de la Muette to Drancy Internment Camp, up to Cité HLM – The Concentration Camp and the Ideal City: Nomadelfia – a Camp- a- nomaly – The Spectre of the Yellow Warehouse: Transitions in Memory – The Camp Form and the Experience Infrastructures: A Counter- Fatal Research Perspective – Fragile Memories: A Brief Historical Overview of Italian Conservation Laws on Fascist Concentration Camps – The Aporias of Civilization: An Itinerary between Images and Memory in Georges Didi- Huberman – The House of the Wannsee Conference as a Perpetrator Site.
