Matteo Cassani Simonetti – författare

The former camp of Fossoli in northern Italy was established in 1942 by the Royal Italian Army as a camp for prisoners of war, later becoming a Nazi-Fascist concentration and transit camp for political opponents, Jews and forced labourers. After the war it became a Catholic community for orphans and a camp for refugees from the former Italian territories of Istria until 1970. A complex system of memory and heritage stems from the legacy of the former camp: its remains, the Museum and Monument to the Political and Racial Deportee by architects BBPR, and the synagogues of Carpi. The Fondazione Fossoli, created in Carpi in 1996, manages this legacy with the purpose of preserving and transmitting the historical memory of the Fossoli camp. Linking together the history of the Holocaust, the resistance to Nazi-Fascism and the political and civic commitment that inspired the birth of the Italian Republic after the dictatorship and the war, Fossoli lies at the very core of Italy’s contemporary cultural memory. The essays in this volume analyse, from different disciplinary perspectives, the material and immaterial heritage that constitutes a rich and articulated memorial system today.Texts by Lorenzo Bertucelli, Matteo Cassani Simonetti, Pierluigi Castagnetti, Paolo Faccio, Robert S. C. Gordon, Viviana Gravano, Giovanni Leoni, Marzia Luppi, Roberta Mira, Daniele Salerno, Andrea Ugolini and Patrizia Violi.

«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.