Ferramonti : Cultural Behaviors and Musical Practices in a Southern-Italian Internment Camp

Ferramonti di Tarsia was the largest internment camp in Southern Italy, both in terms of its size and number of internees - mainly Jews from Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia. An almost forgotten chapter of the Italian history, it served as an absurd and ephemeral meeting place of cultures, languages, religions, and traditions. Both as a fascist camp (1940-1943) and as a DP-camp under British mandate (1943-1945), Ferramonti experienced an intensive musical life, whose features and peculiarities are reconstructed in this book on the basis of personal and administrative sources. Musical practices and cultural behaviors proved fundamental for inmates’ survival and preservation of their individual and collective identities.