The massacre-centred memory of Sant’Anna di Stazzema, Italy

Abstract

This article is based on an anthropological study on memory carried out between 2002 and 2010 in Sant’Anna di Stazzema, a village located in the mountains of Tuscany, where the Nazis exterminated almost all of the civilian inhabitants on 12 August 1944. Nearly 400 people died, mainly women, children and the elderly. Despite what occurred, neither historical nor legal acknowledgements were forthcoming until as late as 2007. Through the study of ethnographical documents, the author analyses the cultural value of memory of the massacre narrated by survivors and the relatives of victims from 1944 to the present day. To examine how this memory has been passed down through time both inside and outside the martyred village, the author reflects on the complex intertwining of the individual and collective remembrances during the long and drawn-out elaboration of the trauma.