War Memorial Bagni di Lucca - Tuscany

This war memorial is located on Via Contessa Cassalini in Bagni di Lucca.

During the German invasion of Italy in the 1940s, Bagni di Lucca was occupied along with many other towns along the Gothic line in the Apennines. Several houses and mansions in the area were used as residences for German soldiers, and some residents born in this region after 1940 are of German ancestry.

During the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state of Germany that existed from September 1943 to May 1945, a concentration camp for Jews was set up in Bagni di Lucca, where both Italian and foreign Jews were interned from December 1943 to January 1944. More than 100 people were killed. interned under appalling conditions in Hotel Le Terme. Some managed to escape, but most were sent to Auschwitz on January 30, 1944. Some Jews were moved between this camp and the Colle di Compecito (PG60) camp near Lucca.

Willem Vandenameele