La strada di casa. Il ritorno in Italia dei sopravvissuti alla Shoah
Author(s)
Guida, Elisa
Date Issued
June 13, 2013
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
This survey is focused on all those Italian people who survived to the Holocaust and try
to investigate and narrate all the trials, efforts and fears6 that they had to face to come back
home after having experienced the deportation. A history of travel? Maybe, but especially
a voyage tracing a history made of reconstruction, meeting and desertion, after the extreme
experience in the concentration camps; the narration of the denial of humanity neglecting
the survivors.
This research begins in considering that every event should be considered in his
historical context and compared with this background. Thus, lead us to the first chapter that
is focused on the definition of the ‘space’ surrounding the protagonists of the story itself.
According to two main different points of view: on the one hand the diachronic one (Storia
di guerra) which tries to retrace the story of all Italian people captured during the Second
World War, and on the other one the synchronic point of view (Storia di pace) narrating
the phase of repatriation in Italy and investigating the role and institutional responsibility
of the Italian Government in managing this particular phenomenon.
In analyzing the Italian institutional apparatus itself, this survey goes on portraying two
dimensions: the real one, retracing the repatriation itself (itineraries, datas, historical
events) and the symbolic one, in which we can find the deep historical and moral meaning
of this voyage towards home.
In the second part of this survey, the investigation is focused on Auschwitz-Birkenau
during the last few months before the Liberation (Death Marches): an important phase
through which retracing the stories and itineraries of Italian survivors.
The last chapter investigate the history of the Lager after the liberation, in particularly
the first aid and Red Army’s interests to take advantage of survivors manpower; moreover
several individual experiences are reconstructed.The period taken into consideration in this survey goes from the liberation of concentration camps to the end of 1945, even if in the chapters the research is also about the previous and the next historical context.
6 This expression is by Primo Levi, La tregua, Einaudi, Torino, 1989, p. 178.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca in Storia d’Europa: società, politica, istituzioni (XIX-XX secolo)
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