Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T00:02:01.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘I was there, too’: memories of victimhood in wartime Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Philip Morgan*
Affiliation:
University of Hull
*

Abstract

This article looks at the contribution that the recording of personal memories makes to the history and to the collective and public remembrance of the Second World War in Italy. It concentrates on a product of the 1980s boom in oral and written testimonies about the war, Giulio Bedeschi's edited anthology of the personal stories of civilian victims, Fronte italiano: c'ero anch'io. La popolazione in guerra. The article assesses the anthology's theme of victimhood and its implications for how Italians have chosen to remember the war. It considers the standing of these personal memories as historical sources, and the extent to which they can contribute to a historical understanding of the Italians’ war experiences.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Absalom, R. 1991. A strange alliance: Aspects of escape and survival in Italy, 1943–45 . Florence: Olschki.Google Scholar
Baldissara, L., and Pezzino, P.. eds. 2004. Crimini e memorie di guerra. Violenze contro le popolazioni e politiche del ricordo . Naples: L'Ancora del Mediterraneo.Google Scholar
Battini, M. 2007. The missing Italian Nurembeg: Cultural amnesia and postwar politics . Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bedeschi, G., ed. 1987. Fronte italiano: c'ero anch'io. La popolazione in Guerra . Milan: Mursia.Google Scholar
Bravo, A. 2005. Armed and unarmed: Struggles without weapons in Europe and in Italy. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 10, no. 4: 468–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bravo, A., and Bruzzone, A.M.. 1995. La guerra senza armi: storie di donne, 1940–1945 . Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Bravo, A., and Jalla, D., eds. 1994. Una misura onesta. Gli scritti di memoria della deportazione dall' Italia, 1944–1993. Milan: Angeli.Google Scholar
Cesarani, D. 2001. Myth and memory. Guardian , 24 January.Google Scholar
Confino, A. 1997. Collective memory and cultural history: Problem of method. American Historical Review 102, no. 5: 1386–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Contini, G. 1997. La memoria divisa . Milan: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Deák, I, Gross, J.T., and Judt, T., eds. 2000. The politics of retribution in Europe: Second World War and its aftermath . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dragoni, U. 1997. La scelta degli I.M.I. Militari italiani prigionieri in Germania (1943–1945) . Florence: Le Lettere.Google Scholar
Draaisma, D. 2006. Why life speeds up as you get older: How memory shapes our past . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ellwood, D. 2005. ‘The Never-Ending Liberation’, P. Pezzino, ‘The Italian Resistance between History and Memory’. Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 10, no. 4: 385–5, 396412.Google Scholar
Focardi, F. 2005. La Guerra della memoria: la Resistenza nel dibattio politico italiano dal 1945 à oggi . Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Foot, J.M. 1998. Words, songs and books: Oral history in Italy. A review and discussion. Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 3, no. 2: 164–74.Google Scholar
Gordon, R.S.C. 2006. The Holocaust in Italian collective memory: il giorno della memoria 27 January 2001. Modern Italy , 11, no. 2: 167–88.Google Scholar
Gramola, B. 2005. La 25a Brigata Nera ‘A. Capanni’ e il suo comandante, Giulio Bedeschi. Storia di una ricerca . Vicenza: Cierre.Google Scholar
Gray, P., and Oliver, K.. 2001. The memory of catastrophe. History Today , 51, no. 2: 915.Google Scholar
Hilberg, R. 1993. Perpetrators, victims, bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 . New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Lagrou, P. 2007. The legacy of Nazi occupation: Patriotic memory and national recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lazzero, R. 1983. Le Brigate Nere . Milan: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Levy, C. 1999. Historians and the “First Republic”. In Writing national histories: Western Europe since 1800 , ed. Berger, S., Donovan, M., and Passmore, K.. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lotti, S. 1986. Donne nella guerra: strategie di sopravvivenza tra permanenze e mutamenti’. In Linea gotica, 1944. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani , ed. Rochat, G., Santarelli, G., and Sorcinelli, P.. Milan: Angeli.Google Scholar
Mammone, A. 2006. A daily revision of the past: Fascism, anti-fascism, and memory in contemporary Italy. Modern Italy , 11, no. 2: 211–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mariani, L. 1995. Memorie e scritture delle donne. In Bologna in guerra, 1940–45 , ed. Dalla Casa, B., and Preti, A.. Milan: Angeli.Google Scholar
Miller, J E. 1999. Who chopped down that cherry tree? The Italian resistance in history and politics, 1945–1998. Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 4, no. 1: 3754.Google Scholar
Morgan, P. 2007. The fall of Mussolini. Italy, the Italians, and the Second World War . Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Passerini, L. 1984. Torino operaia e fascism. Una storia orale . Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
Passerini, L. 1987. Fascism in popular memory: The cultural experience of the Turin working class . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Perco Jacchia, C. 1981. Un paese. La Resistenza: testimonianze di uomini e donne di Luninico Gorizia . Udine: Del Bianco Editore.Google Scholar
Pezzino, P. 1997. Anatomia di un massacro: controversie sopra una strage tedesca . Bologna: Il Mulino.Google Scholar
Portelli, A. 2003. The order has been carried out: History, memory and meaning of a Nazi massacre in Rome . Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Revelli, N. 1966. La strada del davai . Einaudi: Turin.Google Scholar
Revelli, N. 1982. La guerra dei poveri . Einaudi: Turin.Google Scholar
Revelli, N. 1997. La ritirata di Russia . In I luoghi della memoria. Strutture ed eventi dell' Italia unita, M. Isnenghi . Laterza: Ed. Bari.Google Scholar
Scialuga, U. 1991. La memorialistica sulla campagna di Grecia. Bendotti, A., Bertacchi, G., Pelliccioli, M. and Valtulina, E., “‘Ho fatto la Grecia, l'Albania, la Yugoslavia …” Il disagio della memoria’. In L'Italia in guerra, 1940–43, Annali della Fondazione ‘Luigi Micheletti’, 5 , ed. Micheletti, B., and Poggio, P.P.. 1990–1999.Google Scholar
Semelin, J. 1993. Unarmed against Hitler: Civil resistance in Europe, 1939–1943 . Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Sluga, G. 2001. The problem of Trieste and the Italo–Yugoslav border: Difference, identity, and sovereignty in twentieth century Europe . Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Sluga, G. 1999. Italian national memory, national identity, and fascism. In Italian fascism: History, memory and representation , ed. Bosworth, R.J.B., and Dogliani, P.. Basingstoke: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Ventresca, R. 2006. Debating the meaning of fascism in contemporary Italy. Modern Italy , 11, no. 2: 189209.Google Scholar
Ward, D. 1999. Fifty years on: Resistance then, resistance now. Journal of Modern Italian Studies , 4, no. 1: 3754 & 59–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willson, P. 1999. Saints and heroines: Re-writing the history of Italian women in the Resistance. In Opposing fascism: Community, authority and resistance in Europe , ed. Kirk, T., and McElligot, A.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Winter, J. 2004. La memoria della violenza. Il mutamento dell'idea di vittima tra le due conflitti mondiali. In Crimine e memorie di guerra , ed. Baldissara, L., and Pezzino, P.. Naples: L'Ancora del Mediterraneo.Google Scholar
Winter, J., and Sivan, E.. eds. 2000. War and remembrance in the twentieth century . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar