workshop Colfiorito 14/04/2010

Colfiorito of Foligno:Fascist internment camp for civilians Montenegrins (1942-1943).

Denied Rigths of the Symbolic Site read through the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

The history of the Twentieth century was characterized both by situations of extreme human rights denial and by important affirmations of the same Rights through the main international charters. A dialectical hard play, in many ways still in progress, which has been based on people, human dignity in its various individual and collective levels.

The reflection that we propose starts from history. There are scattered places in Europe that beat this dialectic; distant places like Auschwitz, paradigmatic for many consciences, and coming places like Colfiorito of Foligno where between 1942 and 1943 the Fascist regime detained about 1,500 civilians arrested during the occupation of Montenegro by Italian troops.


The site itself does not speak, it needs the historic knowledge and the frequent not distracted presence so that it can gives back traces of dignity denied.



What we propose is first of all the attending of the site, for taking lessons not from the past (history is a teacher of life) but from the practical and critical reflection, skills necessary for any conscious exercise of democracy.


If the European economy was born with the Treaty of Rome, that of people - argued Vittorio Emanuele Giuntella, historical and interned military after Sept. 8, 1943- was condensed in prison camps, where free minds, despite all, began thinking of common rights and duties regardless of the people belong to.

The Carter of the Fundamental Rights of the European Union is a mature product of such perspective. The document was signed at Nizza on 7 December 2000; consists of 54 Articles subdivided in 7 Titles: dignity, liberty, equality, solidarity, citizenship, justice, provisions on the interpretation of the same Charter. Its main role is to enable states and citizens of the Union to have one document that brings together human rights protected by the EU.
The second proposal is to use the Charter to order the rights denied in the history of the field of Colfiorito emerged during the workshop on site and link them with those which today the Charter enshrines.