The book recounts and revisits a highly contentious event of World War II: the Nazi massacre of hundreds of the villagers of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany. This was the second largest massacre of civilians by the Nazis in Italy, after that of Marzabotto. While the facts of the event have long been known, the interpretation of what transpired on August 12, 1944, has been disputed for more than 60 years. The book not only scrupulously reconstructs the massacre using eyewitness accounts and German documents, it explains the logic of Nazi terror, exposes the feeble attempts after the war to mete out justice and the moral culpability of the Italian Fascists, and ends with a meditation on the role of the historian and the difference between “judicial truth” and “historical truth.”
Memory and Massacre. Revisiting Sant’Anna di Stazzema
PEZZINO, PAOLO
2012-01-01
Abstract
The book recounts and revisits a highly contentious event of World War II: the Nazi massacre of hundreds of the villagers of Sant’Anna di Stazzema in Tuscany. This was the second largest massacre of civilians by the Nazis in Italy, after that of Marzabotto. While the facts of the event have long been known, the interpretation of what transpired on August 12, 1944, has been disputed for more than 60 years. The book not only scrupulously reconstructs the massacre using eyewitness accounts and German documents, it explains the logic of Nazi terror, exposes the feeble attempts after the war to mete out justice and the moral culpability of the Italian Fascists, and ends with a meditation on the role of the historian and the difference between “judicial truth” and “historical truth.”I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
