Vite di Imi

The story of the 650,000 IMI-Internati Militari Italiani, i.e. the soldiers arrested by the Germans after the armistice and deported to camps in Germany, has long been relegated to private memories. The first scientific publications did not occur until the 1980s.

In 2008, a commission of German-Italian historians was set up to 'deal with the Italian-German war past and in particular the fate of Italian military internees deported to Germany'. The Commission's Final Report, published in 2012, emphasised, among other things, the need to establish a Memorial Place for IMIs in Berlin and Rome and to promote close twinning between the two centres.

While in Berlin-Schöneweide the exhibition 'Tra più fuochi’ [Between more fires] was set up on the site of a forced labour camp that had housed Italian Military internees, in Rome the space in Via Labicana was chosen, adjacent to the ANRP headquarters, which first drew up the feasibility outline of the project and then implemented it, with the financial aid of the German-Italian Future Fund set up at the Embassy.

The Museum 'Vite di IMI. Paths from the War Front to the German Lager 1943-1945’ recovers the association's intensive collection work and makes available to the public, with cutting-edge multimedia devices, material having considerable interest, with specific routes for schools.

The route runs through six rooms, describing the experience of internment in all its phases (arrest, deportation, camp life, liberation, repatriation) and its aspects (treatment, forced labour, leisure, art production).