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Literary Park - Internment Camp of Ferramonti di Tarsia (Cs) for the European Heritage Label

10 Dicembre 2020
Literary Park - Internment Camp of Ferramonti di Tarsia (Cs) for the European Heritage Label Foto: Stanislao de Marsanich Stanislao de Marsanich
Ferramonti and Ventotene, a concentration camp and a place of confinement, candidates for the European Heritage Label

On November 2nd, was announced that the Ernst Bernhard Literary Park - Campo di Internamento di Ferramonti di Tarsia (Cs) and the Island of Ventotene has been admitted to the pre-selection of Mibact for the candidacies for the European Heritage Label, the recognition given to sites that help "promote a sense of belonging to the European Union through the richness of diversity and the importance of intercultural dialogue"(www.marchiopatrimonio.beniculturali.it).

The European Heritage Label does not have the "beauty" of a location as its object but enhances its community spirit, message and emotional charge. The homes of Schumann and De Gasperi, the Capitol of the Treaties of Rome and the Schengen Village, symbol of the free movement of people, represent milestones in the construction of a common European identity. The casual but happy combination of Ferramonti and Ventotene's candidacies has a value not to be underestimated in the days of brexit and a health emergency that limits some fundamental freedoms built and conquered in those same places, by those who were forced to stay there.

A concentration camp and a place of confinement, two examples of one of the most tragic periods of the Old Continent. Confined and inmates who were able to lay the foundations for the realization of a political and formative dialogue that continues today. On the one hand, the Manifesto for a free and united Europe by Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi and Eugenio Colorni, on the other an everyday life conquered over desperation by people from a large part of Europe and forced into a narrow field, fenced by barbed wire, in a region in the center of the Mediterranean and very far from their homes. A political manifesto and a message of cultural openness in two places once a symbol of repression and today immersed in two magnificent protected nature reserves: the State Nature Reserve of the Ventotene and S. Stefano Islands (Lt) and the Natural Reserves of Lake Tarsia and of the Crati River Mouth (Cs) of the Calabria Region, Department of Environmental Protection.

On November 9, 1989, a crucial day in the construction of the Union, in the seat of the central committee of the Sed (Party of Socialist Unity of the GDR) it was a former inmate of Ferramonti, the correspondent of ANSA Riccardo Ehrman, who brought down the Wall of Berlin at a press conference. As is well known, Ehrman asked the party information officer, Günter Schabowski, since when ("Ab wann?") The new regulation on transits between the two Germanies came into effect. Schabowski gave the historical answer: "As far as I know , immediately, from now". The words had an immediate echo and the "Grenztruppen der DDR" (the border troops of the GDR), surprised and without indications, opened the checkpoints to the large mass of East Berliners who poured west without any more controls.

In an interview given in Madrid in 2019 to the director of the Museo della Memoria di Ferramonti and President of the Literary Park Ernst Bernhard, Professor Teresa Ciliberti, Ehrman testified: "I was interned at the age of 13 for having certainly been guilty of being Jewish . I am still clear. Campo di Ferramonti was a fascist internment camp for Jews. It was the largest field in Italy. I was detained with my parents. I can say of this camp that it was not a concentration camp in the traditional sense of the word. It was a field of salvation because everyone, I mean everyone was saved. Not one was handed over to the Nazis. " (1) 
In the interview he illustrated the entire period of his internment in which he also understood the bond of gratitude that bound him to the master who was also interned in the Camp and of which some works donated by Herman are now exhibited in the museum space of the Camp of Concentration.
Ferramonti was a different reality from the Nazi concentration camps of Central Eastern Europe. As Ehrman points out, "for the prisoners, passing through Ferramonti meant salvation." Established by the fascist regime in June 1940, about 5000 prisoners passed through the camp, most of them stateless of the Jewish religion from all over Europe. The first came in 1942 and were forced to complete it with their own hands.

"What happened in there was incredible. In a space without logic, people from all over Europe converged who were able to overcome pain, separation from their families, only thanks to solidarity, coexistence, brotherhood " (From the short film L’Angelo di Ferramonti, by Pier Luigi Sposato)

Many of the inmates, their children and grandchildren, meet again in Ferramonti every January 27 on the Day of Remembrance. They tell their stories to the numerous present and pass the baton to students, residents, visitors, Jewish communities around the world and the nearby Arbëreshë Community, the Albanian ethno-linguistic minority or, better, the Albanians of Italy, who they played a fundamental role in the sustenance and salvation of inmates and who have now assumed a leading role in the care of their memory (read: Gli Arbёreshe in the history of Italy. By Teresa Ciliberti). Every year the Campo di Ferramonti, the Ernst Bernhard Literary Park and the Crati Reserves welcome about 20,000 visitors.

At the time of the promulgation of the Italian racial laws (1938) the approximately 10 thousand stateless foreign Jews present in Italy were ordered to leave the country. Most of them managed to leave, but for just over 3,000 people in May 1940 the arrest order was issued. Many of them were taken to Ferramonti where other groups fleeing Nazism soon joined them and arrived in the territories under Italian control from Yugoslavia to Greece, from Albania to North Africa.

Ernst Bernhard, to whom the Literary Park is dedicated, was among the first to arrive in Ferramonti. Jungian-style psychoanalyst, he had been practicing in Italy for some time. Escaped from Berlin, rejected by the United Kingdom, he found escape in Rome. In Ferramonti he had the opportunity to continue his studies maintaining a correspondence with his wife Dora who from Rome sent him astrological analyzes, considerations on the daily newspaper, notes on Eranos' meetings and then books, food, clothing. When he was freed thanks to the intercession of the orientalist, explorer and historian Giuseppe Tucci, who saved him from extradition to Germany, he returned to Rome and contributed greatly to the cultural revival of the country. He was the psychoanalyst of Adriano Olivetti, Natalia Ginzburg, Amalia Rosselli, Giorgio Manganelli, Giacomo Debenedetti, Roberto Brazien founder of Adelphi, Luciano Emmer, Carla Vasio, Vittorio De Seta. Federico Fellini himself, whose centenary is celebrated this year, went to Berhard's analysis and the filmmaker himself told of being strongly influenced by Bernhard for 8/12 and Juliet of the spirits (read: Federico Fellini, Ernst Bernhard and the Book of dreams. By Teresa Ciliberti).

I met Dina Smadar on the eve of Remembrance Day 2013. I had just arrived in Tarsia and I met some guests in the excellent restaurant of our beautiful hotel. I was catapulted into a world that I knew but not so closely, made of suffering but also of memories that revealed in front of a set table can also become pleasant despite the context to which they were referred. Certainly one of the most intense dinners I have ever attended. "My parents got married in the field and I was born in Ferramonti". Dina now lives in Israel and comes back every year to tell her story. Every year the emotion is inevitable and the tears of the listener mix with the frost of the January mornings in a place that, I remember, today is at the center of a wonderful Nature reserve in the Calabria region but was once a malarial swamp, very cold and humid in winter, sultry in summer.
Dina's father had fled from Bratislava at the age of 17 and arrived in Ferramonti between February and March 1942 from the island of Rhodes. He was part of the largest group of inmates, that of refugees from the "Pentcho". More than 500 people from Central and Eastern Europe, mostly Czechs, Slovaks and Poles belonging to the Zionist organization Betarche, had tried to reach Palestine from Bratislava two years earlier. An "Odyssey in the heart of Europe under the Nazi yoke" piled on a barge without water or food.

Eva Porcilan was also a daughter of Ferramonti. The parents met on the same boat that sailed the Danube for more than five months, touching Budapest then Belgrade to the Black Sea and then, through the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, the Aegean. Eva spent the first year of her life in the camp. Her father and her mother have always told her that they survived thanks to the generosity of the local people who fed them and brought them comfort. The Pentcho, was shipwrecked on the night between 9-10 October 1940 in front of the uninhabited island of Kamilanisi, in the Italian Dodecanese. First sighted by the British, they were then saved by the Italian military ship "Camogli" commanded by Capt. Carlo Orlandi which ventured into the mined sea. They were taken to Rhodes where they were interned until the beginning of 1942 and then transferred in two stages to Ferramonti apparently by the intervention of Pius XII. Later Captain Orlandi was arrested by the Nazis who deported him to Germany. Unlike the Pentcho deportees, the Jews from Rhodes did not survive the aftermath of 8 September.

Almost every year I also meet Edith Fischof Gilboa, who entered the camp as a prisoner at the age of 16. Returns from Israel every January He returns to Israel every January because he feels the duty to remember the people who suffered, the parents and above all to thank the people of Tarsia. She writes it in her book "I will live free in the promised land", Mursia 2018. Despite the wrongs suffered, she Edith she prefers to remember the humanity of the poor people without history who helped them. “What has remained in my mind is that click of the gate that closes behind me. I thought, now I'm in a trap ... life in the camp is terrible in principle. Then slowly you try to live it in some way. At seven there is an appeal, after seven the war against the bugs that invade the cot begins. Try to live a hygienic life, because there was also no water, everything was missing. We spent our days thinking about surviving, "(interview with CN24 TV)

Ferramonti di Tarsia was "the only example of a real concentration camp built by the fascist government following the racial laws and historically the largest Italian internment camp". An area of ​​16 hectares with 92 shacks of various sizes that she saw forced to live together and organize themselves as best as possible by people from half of Europe.

According to the report by Israel Kalk, the main "groups" are summarized below by a text by Dr. Simona Celiberti (2) The report is available in the Kalk Fund of the CDEC (Foundation for Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center).

-Romans. About 160 men from Germany and Austria and resident in Rome for several years. Arrested immediately after Italy entered the war, they were the first to be interned at Ferramonti di Tarsia in June 1940. It was a socially homogeneous group made up of professionals with good availability of money. In this group there was Ernst Bernhard, whose correspondence with his wife Dora who remained in Rome testifies to daily life in the camp (Ernst Bernhard, Lettere a Dora from the Ferramonti internment camp (1940-41), Aragno, 2011)

- The northerners. More than 300 men from Germany, Austria and Eastern European countries, residing for years in various cities in northern Italy or who have recently come as refugees (in particular from Poland) to escape the Nazi advance. It was a heterogeneous group in terms of professions and economic possibilities. He arrived in Ferramonti in September 1940.

- The Benghazi group. About 300 men, women and children from various European countries gathered in Trieste waiting for a transport to Palestine via Benghazi. From Libya they were instead transferred to Ferramonti in September 1940.

- The Ljubljana group. More than 100 people including men, women and children from Zagreb and other Croatian cities. They took refuge in Ljubljana occupied by Italy to escape persecution by the pro-Nazi Ustashas. They were transferred to Ferramonti in July 1941.

- The Kavaja group. 186 people including men, women and children from Belgrade and other cities in Serbia who fled to Montenegro following the German bombings in April 1941 and interned in a camp in Kavajë (about 20 km from Durres). They were transferred to Ferramonti in October 1941. Eng. Alfred Wiesner who immediately after the war founded the Algida ice cream company.

- The Pentcho group we already talked about.

- The group of Yugoslavs. About 100 young partisans arrested in Italian-controlled regions. It was the most combative group against the Italian leadership and the Jewish organization of the camp.

- The group of the Greeks. About one hundred people were arrested for anti-Italian behavior. Of Orthodox Christian confession they had various tensions with the Jewish organization of the camp. On the basis of what Kalk testifies, this group was sent to Ferramonti by mistake of an official of the Ministry of the Interior in Rome who confused the Greek orthodoxy with the Jewish one. In this group we remember the presence of Evangelos Averoff Tossizza who will later become an important politician of democratic Greece and he recounted his experience in Italy in the book "Prisoner in Italy". Another Greek, Costantin Zotis, recounted the internment at Ferramonti in the book “I am still standing”. With them was also the monk Damaskinos who managed the Greek Orthodox chapel.

- The French group. Very little is known about this group of internees and their presence is evidenced by one of the photos taken by the British after their liberation. The caption of the photo classified 6923 (IWM, London), indicates that they come from Corsica. With them the French General Marchetti.

- The group of Chinese. There were about 70 men of Chinese nationality who carried out the itinerant trade in the cities of the north or were embarked on Italian ships. They were all arrested after Italy entered the war and taken to Ferramonti where they set up one laundry.

As the number of internees increased and to improve the coexistence of heterogeneous groups in terms of language and religious orientation (there were for example Orthodox and Reform Jews), the Jewish community of the camp organized a small parliament to represent the individual barracks in the general organization and in the realization of the numerous cultural and sporting activities.

Between September and October 1943 the retreating Hermann Göring division approached the camp. The management ordered the immediate evacuation and the inmates of the Jewish religion were hidden in the countryside with the help of the peasants of Tarsia. A yellow flag was raised to protect the elderly and the sick who remained in the barracks, indicating a typhus epidemic.

In addition to being the largest camp for Jews in Italy, Ferramonti di Tarsia was the first to be liberated. After the armistice of 8 September, the Italian authorities abandoned it and on the morning of 14 September 1943 the first English trucks entered. From that moment until the closure of 11 December 1945, Ferramonti di Tarsia had a Jewish management.

Due to the peculiarity of its social organization and the humane treatment it received from inmates, the Jerusalem Post called it "an unexpected paradise" and the Jewish historian Jonathan Steinberg called it "the largest kibbutz on the European continent". (Read: The Ferramonti di Tarsia internment camp. The largest kibbutz on the European continent, by Giovanni Sorge. The magazine.ch, 20 April 2020).

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NOTES

(1) The interview was carried out in 2019 in Madrid by Professor Teresa Cliberti, the Councilor for Culture of the Municipality of Tarsia Roberto Cannizzaro and Dr. Simona Celiberti, coordinator of the events of the Museum of Memory of Ferramonti di Tarsia and the Ernst Bernhard Literary Park. The initiative was sponsored by the Municipality of Tarsia, the Mayor Roberto Ameruso and the Dante Committee of Cosenza with the President Maria Cristina Parise Martirano.

(2) Among the Ferramonti inmates, some of them became very famous in various fields:
Allan Herskovic, a native of Zagreb. Before the Second World War he represented Yugoslavia in three world table tennis championships. With the Nazi invasion he lost his parents and sister. He managed to escape to Italy where he was imprisoned and interned in Ferramonti. After the war he moved for a few years to Rome and Turin where he prepared the first Italian table tennis teams and represented Italy in some world championships. He later moved to the United States where he continued his sporting activity.
Imi Lichtenfeld was born in Budapest and became one of the most famous martial arts champions. He devised the combat and self-defense system called Krav Maga. He managed to escape from the Nazis by embarking on the Pentcho. In 1944 he participated in the establishment of the Israeli army by training several elite units and helping to forge the legend of Israeli special units. His fighting technique is very widespread and adopted by many armies.
Michel Fingesten is considered the greatest artist in the field of ex-libris and one of the most important engravers of the 1900s. He Half Austrian and half Italian, he studied in Vienna together with Oskar Kokoschka of whom he was a close friend. In his youth he traveled extensively. From 1935 he settled in Milan and following the racial laws he was deported to Ferramonti where he opened the most important artistic "studio" in the field. He died a few days after his release due to a post-surgical infection and is buried in Cerisano (CS). His works are exhibited in many museums around the world including the Museum of the Memory of Ferramonti.
Evangelos Averoff-Tossizza, was part of the group of Greeks interned in Ferramonti. In the post-war period, he was an important Greek politician and held the position of defense minister for many years. He was one of the founders of the New Greek Democratic Party.
Ernst Bernhard was a Berlin doctor and psychoanalyst who was a pupil of Carl Gustav Jung in Zurich. He adhered to the Jungian theory by adding his personal theosophical and esoteric address. Following the Nazi persecutions he moved first to London and then to Rome. He was deported to Ferramonti where he remained for ten months. After the war he founded the Italian Association of Analytical Psychology (AIPA).
Moris Ergas was one of the most important film producers of the 1960s. Among his most famous films, "Il Generale della Rovere" by Roberto Rossellini with Vittorio De Sica, "Kapo" by Gillo Pontecorvo, "La parmigiana" by Antonio Pietrangeli with Sandra Milo , "Boys of Life" by Pier Paolo Pasolini. After the "Prague Spring" he exported Czechoslovakian cinema abroad.
David Mel, a Yugoslavian doctor, was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize of Medicine for the discovery of the vaccine for dysentery. In Ferramonti he worked as a cook.
Alfred Wiesner, Yugoslav engineer, in 1942 she took refuge in Italy where he was arrested and deported to Ferramonti. After the liberation of the camp he followed the allied troops. At the end of the war, the allies gave Wiesner two machines to make ice cream. In September 1953 he founded the Algida company.
Richard Dattner, a Polish Jew, was interned with his family in Ferramonti. After the war he emigrated to the United States where he is recognized among the most important architects in the country.
Oscar Klein. Escaped with his family from Austria, he was imprisoned in Ferramonti where he had the chance to hear jazz music for the first time. He is well known for his swing and Dixieland music

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