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Memorial Day: in Servigliano in the 'pain station' today a national monument

2021-01-27T12:14:13.260Z


Prison camp for Jews, prisoners, exiles has become Parco Pace (ANSA)  "The Germans were scary. I was only 5 years old, but I remember the guards and the prisoners well, I saw them from the windows of the house". On the eve of the Day of Remembrance, Vittorio Seri, 84, told the ANSA prison camp in Servigliano, a town of 2,200 inhabitants in the province of Fermo. "Even though I was a child at the time - he adds -, certain things remain etched in my mind, like when a


 "The Germans were scary. I was only 5 years old, but I remember the guards and the prisoners well, I saw them from the windows of the house".

On the eve of the Day of Remembrance, Vittorio Seri, 84, told the ANSA prison camp in Servigliano, a town of 2,200 inhabitants in the province of Fermo.

"Even though I was a child at the time - he adds -, certain things remain etched in my mind, like when a German killed a Jew in the middle of a wheat field".


    Stories and memories that are kept in the House of Memory, whose headquarters was built in what the president of the Giordano Viozzi association calls "the pain station".

"The prisoners arrived in Servigliano on trains that stopped at this station, with the platform passing five meters from the internment camp", says the president.

Which traces the history of the field, now transformed into a well-equipped playground renamed the "Park of Peace".

"The prison camp - explains Viozzi - was built during the First World War for the detention of Austro-Hungarian soldiers, then in the Second World War it was first used for the detention of Anglo-American soldiers and from 1943 to 1944 as a concentration camp for waiting Jews Finally - Viozzi recalls - it was a reception center for Julian-Dalmatian refugees until 1955 when it was closed and the transformation of the area began over decades ".

"In Parliament - adds the president - the legislative process has begun, thanks also to the interest of life senator Liliana Segre and senator Francesco Verducci, to make the Servigliano field a national monument".


    Of what was the prison camp, the surrounding wall remains, with even the barbed wire dating back to the conflict of 1915-1918, but the breach through which some prisoners escaped before the arrival of the Germans, and there are also some small houses where the soldiers slept or stood guard.

An old ruin is also visible within the perimeter.

"It was the former canteen of the guards and you can still see the sink of the time - explains Viozzi -. Thanks to the interest of the municipal administration and the Archaeological, Fine Arts and Landscape Superintendence, work will soon begin to recover this building and make it an additional museum to keep alive the memory of this place that has known so much pain ".


    As it is recalled in the diaries written by the prisoners and found over the years or in the plaques at the entrance to the park: "In this place - we read - Jews were imprisoned starting from October 1943 ... 31 were deported to the abyss of German concentration camps. Only 3 survived the Nazi-Fascist barbarism ".

(HANDLE).


Source: ansa

All life articles on 2021-01-27

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