On Saturday 17 February at 5.30 pm, the ARCI Subasio Club – Via Orfini, 14 in Foligno will host “I Campi di Tullio”, presentation of the book and meeting with the author Luigino Ciotti. The initiative is organized by the ARCI Subasio club, the Casa dei Popoli, AsiCuba Umbria, the ANEd, the ANPI, the primomaggio cultural club.

IMI, Italian Military Internees, is a little-known definition that hides a great drama of World War II. It was Hitler who thus defined the Italian soldiers who were captured by the Germans and taken to the concentration camps immediately after the armistice of 8 September 1943. There were 650,000 deportees, of whom almost 50,000 died of hunger, hardship, disease, used as slave workers to replace the Teutonic men at the front in the factories and fields.

Among these also Tullio Ciotti, a young laborer from Passo di Bettona, born in 1924, called up to arms just three months ago. His story of imprisonment and war is therefore not individual, but collective. The suffering, the oppression, the abuses suffered, the nostalgia, the hunger, the cold, the humiliations were not the “heritage” of Tullio alone, but of all the Italian victims of a war that the majority of them had not wanted. For this reason, many refused to join the Republic of Salò and remained in hostile places to suffer and bear witness to their ideas and values.

What happened must be known and passed down, because memory is a decisive element in preventing the repetition of events which, perhaps in different forms, unfortunately still happen today in some areas of the world. There was no hero Tullio Ciotti, there were thousands of simple people, mostly farmers, who in the name of fascism were sacrificed to sit at the table of the victorious and acquire new territories and riches that did not concern them. History, however, took a different path and all IMIs, like other soldiers, found it impossible to live their youth years in a carefree way. Many did not have the desire and courage to talk about their experience and the inhumanity of man. Tullio Ciotti did it and it is good to disclose his testimony.

Citizens are invited to participate and spread the word about the event.


For the organizing committee,
Alessandro Pacini

Place: ARCI Club Subasio Foligno, Via Orfini, 14, FOLIGNO, PERUGIA, UMBRIA


https://news.italy24.press/books/1273292.html