Sant’Anna di Stazzema

Discover Italy with SRISA field trip to Sant’Anna di Stazzema

To visit the small Tuscan village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema is to truly come face to face with Italian history. Disaster and destruction came to this village during the Second World War, when, as part of a Nazi operation against the Italian Resistance movement, the Waffen-SS murdered 560 local villagers and refugees, including 130 children, and burned their bodies on August 12th, 1944.

SRISA’s Professor Lorenzo Pubblici organized a visit to this village which included a meeting with Enrico Pieri, a survivor of the massacre. The students said it was an unforgettable and moving experience, and the trip echoed these words of Piero Calamandrei, the famous Italian author, and politician:

“If you want to go on a pilgrimage to the place where our Constitution was created, go to the mountains where the partisans fell, to the prisons where they were incarcerated and to the fields where they were hanged. Wherever an Italian died to redeem freedom and dignity, go there young people and ponder: because that was where our Constitution was born.”