Where and when
Greetings from Monica Barni (Vice President of the Tuscany Region) and Cristina Giachi (Vice Mayor of Florence)
Introduction by Camilla Brunelli and Moreno Cipriani
Theatrical reading of the testimonies of some concentration camp survivors, by Teatro D’Almaviva
In collaboration with the Prato Deportation Museum – Tuscany Region – ANED Toscana – ISRT
Following the general strike of early March 1944 called by the CLN throughout central-northern Italy, a large number of people, men and women, arrested by the soldiers of the Italian Social Republic in the city and in the province (in particular in the Prato and nell’Empolese) were locked up in the spaces of the Ex-Scuole Leopoldine, registered and interrogated by the Nazi-Fascists. The women were all released while 338 men were taken to the nearby railway station and sent, with the transport on 8 March 1944, to be deported to the Nazi concentration camp of Mauthausen and its sub-camps. 64 survived, that is 19%.
The purpose of the initiative is to make known to the interested public a little known “place of memory” in Florence, which has been able to count, up to now, on a small plaque placed on the internal wall of the loggia which, while making the just homage to the victims, does not sufficiently explain the place and what happened inside. In the local history books little is published on the subject, but much is found in the memorials and in particular within the corpus of interviews with survivors made by Andrea Devoto in the late 1980s in collaboration with ANED which, for the occasion, will be used for a reading-show by the actors of the D’Almaviva Theater.