We walked all around a vast closed area in search of a sign or a memorial saying we are at the former Italian fascist concentration camp site. Instead, in Visco, a small community in Northern Italy, we found walls, fences, barbed wire, gates and bushes keeping us out from what during WW2 was a concentration camp and later a military area.
As much as we tried, we didn't find a memorial place to pay our respects to the victims of this concentration camp, operating between February and September 1943.During eight months between 4500 to 6000 prisoners, mostly civilians from Slovenia and Croatia, were kept in internment there.
The concentration camp was a detention center mostly for people belonging to ethnic groups living in territories occupied by Italian army during WW2. Under the rule of fascism civilian inhabitants were displaced from areas today belonging to Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Montenegro.
At that point, we find it important to remember that as a result of the mistreatment of civilians interned during WW2, the Fourth Geneva Convention was established in 1949, in order to provide for the protection of civilians during times of war. We believe that in times of enormous human development and achievement, we need to remember the basic values of humanity and human responsibility. We should own the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which restricts the use of internment. Article 9 states that "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile." Enforcing the Declaration of Human Rights, we pay our respects to victims of Italian fascist camps.
Posts
