Strappati all'oblio.

– The danger of forgetting and sites of memory. ‘The issue of forgetting is more complicated than you might think’ (Ricoeur, 2012); if, however, we content ourselves with considering it to be the opposite of memory, forgetting becomes the menace that threatens the past we perceive as a source of pain, a menace from which it must be saved. If we can salvage the reason why things happened, it will prove easier to save what remains of sites, even those that cause us pain, from the abyss of oblivion, accepting their differences, their incompleteness and the signs of their belonging to the past. History unfolds even in a space that always preserves a trace of its past. There are particular sites that, more than others, end up being true mediators of collective memory: the so-called lieu de mémoire (Norà, 1984). From the 1990s on, initially in Germany, the term lieu de mémoire often referred to ‘places of trauma or Nazi-Fascist violence’ (Pirazzoli, 2010) and this is the meaning that will be adopted in this book. – Coming to terms with the horror. Immediately after the Second World War, the need to make and convey memory led to the creation of new monuments and memorials in the places where violence was perpetrated. The first such case in Italy was the mausoleum commemorating the victims of the Fosse Ardeatine massacre, where a new building of enormous architectural worth (by Mario Fiorentino and Giuseppe Perugini), though not the site itself, became the medium and the condition of experience and memory. At the same time, something different occurred in France. What remained of the village of Oradour-sur-Glane, where the Germans massacred over 660 people in a reprisal in 1944, was immediately classified as a monument historique, launching a determined campaign to preserve the ruins, a campaign that continues to this day. – Different conservation instances over time. Sites like Oradour-sur-Glane are found in Italy as well, such as Monte Sole, near Bologna, where almost 800 people were killed in a reprisal. The massacre, followed by the passage of the front line, irretrievably destroyed the site, sealing its abandonment. It was only in 1989 that the memory of the events that occurred in the autumn of 1944 was reconstructed and its memory promoted, when the Scuola di Pace di Monte Sole regional historical park authority was set up. The care taken over sites that witnessed instances of Italian Nazi oppression was not always the same, however. After the Second World War, the sites associated with the Holocaust were forgotten (unconsciously and, at times, consciously): Fossoli was one of those sites, which was not protected by MiBACT (the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) until May 2011. – From an architectural competition to planned conservation: Fossoli 1991- 2012. One of the first steps towards the enhancement of the former concentration camp was the competition held in 1991 for the creation of a park. This, however, did not lead to a tangible result. Fossoli undoubtedly remains an unusual case among Holocaust sites (hardly anything remains of other Italian transit and concentration camps, apart from San Sabba) due to its considerable resilience, meaning the ability to ‘reconstruct’ itself without alienating its identity: a prison camp that became a transit camp gathering Jews destined for the concentration camps, then a place of rebirth with the Community of Nomadelfia and finally Villaggio San Marco for Istrian refugees. What still strikes us today about this place is the wealth of diachronic traces left behind by those who lived there and the relationship between what remains and the natural environment that surrounds and invades it. Indeed, every site still has traces similar to historical layers in the features of its landscape, each of which can be interpreted as the manifestation of a symbolic, identity-forming value. The act of saving a place like the former concentration camp in Fossoli implies a different level of attention paid to the problem of memory and its relationship with the context, in environmental terms as well. – The aim of this book. This book aims to explore all this, reflecting on what we mean when we refer to the term ‘a site of memory’. It tells the tale of a challenge: that of managing and maintaining/preserving the camp, a challenge accepted by the Fossoli Foundation, which has managed it since 1996. It explains how, thanks to the study and constant, diligent monitoring of what some would describe as a collection of insignificant ruins overrun by vegetation, it is possible to end up with prevention strategies for taking care of the buildings without altering their essence instead. (AU