EUSTORY History Camp "Tuscany 1944 / 2014"
"Tuscany 1944 / 2014: War Crimes of the German Army and SS in Family Remembrance and in German-Italian Culture of Memory" is the topic of the EUSTORY History Camp that began today. How did the war crimes of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS affect the families of the victims and perpetrators and how does the second generation deal with the difficult legacy of this history today? Young EUSTORY alumni from Germany and Italy will discuss these issues and search for traces of this controversial history in the historical records of both Italy and Germany.
The German Army and the Waffen-SS committed countless war crimes in Italy and other European countries during the Second World War. Though Tuscany is not a place normally associated with this, in fact, between September 1943 and the end of the war in 1945, tens of thousands of civilians and partisans were killed there by German soldiers and SS members.
On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the war crimes committed in Tuscany, EUSTORY alumni from Italy and Germany will come together near Castelnuovo Beradenga (about one hour from Florence) where civilians were shot and killed in July 1944. How these war crimes have affected the families of the victims and perpetrators and how Germany and Italy have dealt with this part of their shared history since the end of the Second World War are the core questions of the EUSTORY History Camp.
The History Camp is integrated into a set of events in Castelnuovo that deal with the same topic: On 30 June, a German-Italian History Convention will be held under the direction of Filippo Focardi of the University of Padua and Wolfgang Schieder of the University of Cologne who is also Head of the German-Italian Historian's Commission. There will be a meeting of contemporary witnesses on the second day of the convention.
Participants of the History Camp will be able to attend parts of this symposium and the meeting of the contemporary witnesses. Moreover, Kerstin von Lingen of the University of Heidelberg and speaker at the convention, will attend the History Camp to speak to the participants. Participants will talk to and interact with the children of victims and perpetrators. Together they will search for traces of this controversial history in the historical records of both Italy and Germany.
Another highlight of the History Camp will be the attendance of the opening of an open-air theatre production at a historical place in Tuscany. In it, Ulrich Waller, art director of the Hamburg St. Pauli Theater, together with German and Italian actors and artists will explore the German war crimes.