Limits of hope – Refugees in the Fex Valley and Bergell during the Second World War

Especially in the months following Italy's armistice with the USA and Great Britain on September 8, 1943, and the subsequent German occupation of northern Italy, thousands of refugees – Italian deserters and conscientious objectors, escaped prisoners of war, Jews of various nationalities, and later also persecuted partisans – attempted to escape to Switzerland, including across the southern borders of the Fex Valley and the Bergell Valley. Mirella Carbone and Joachim Jung report on some of these escape stories. Thanks to previously unexamined documents from the former Fex border guard post, the two researchers were able to accurately document and quantify the admissions and rejections of refugees during the war for this section of the border. In the course of their research, they were also able to track down eight contemporary witnesses who, as children, had to leave Italy to save their lives. The lecture also features older residents of the two valleys who came into contact with the foreigners and whose vivid memories of these encounters remain vividly in their memory to this day.