Public compensation and private permanent loss : the memory of twentieth century European refugees

My research is focused on three groups of refugees, adopting a comparative approach. They experienced the exile in the second half of the century, after a similar past of migration, colonization and exposure to an invasive nationalistic propaganda. Questions are related to the different ways experienced in Germany, in Italy and in France in order to provide a moral compensation, to nourish the memory and to include these refugees’ experience in the national public history. In the private side, a wide amount of literary products and memories allows to identify which elements of the past have survived in families and individuals during the effort to build their new identities, inclusive of their experience of the flight and of their happier past, in order to give some relief to their incurable homesickness.