Museum and Documentation Centre of Deportation and Resistance

(Prato, Tuscany)

Credits: Baldassare Amodeo

Where are we?

We are at the Museum and Documentation Centre of Deportation and Resistance

The museum was founded in 2002 as a remembrance centre of the deportation to Nazi concentration and extermination camps. It is located in Figline di Prato where 29 partisans were captured and hanged by the Germans on 6 September 1944.

Following factory strikes in March 1944, more than a hundred people from Prato were deported for political reasons to Mauthausen concentration camp and the Ebensee subcamp. Most were taken from the Lucchesi wool mill and the Campolmi finishing works. Transferred to the Scuole Leopoldine in Florence and then to Santa Maria Novella station, they were loaded onto cattle cars and sent to the concentration camps.

The Museum was founded by several Prato survivors, in particular Roberto Castellani, in order to document and share the memory of deportation. Their project, approved and financed by the Municipality, led to the opening of the Museum and Documentation Centre on 10th April 2002. The opening ceremony was attended by then President of Italy, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Since 2008, the Museum has been managed by a foundation composed of the Municipalities of the Province of Prato, the National Association of Ex-Prisoners of the Nazi Camps, and the National Association of Italian Partisans. The Museum is located on the exact spot where, on 6th September 1944, while Prato was being liberated from Nazi occupation, 29 young partisans were arrested and hanged by a unit of the retreating Wehrmacht.

USEFUL INFORMATION

Facility or museum: yes

Website: www.museodelladeportazione.it

Geographic location: Prato, Tuscany