Divided Memories? The Last Testimonies on Nazi Massacres in Italy

The article analyzes changes of the memories of victims of Nazi massacres in Italy over the past 30 years, proposing a comparison among some interviews conducted between 2019 and 2020 and others carried out since the mid-1990s. The study highlights the ways in which survivors' narratives were redefined and layered, at the intersection of a process of generational evolution and a process of adaptation of witnesses to the new canons of institutional memory, as well as to the structure narrative proposed by trials of the new judicial season against German war criminals, debated between 1997 and 2014. The anti-partisan memory that had characterized the testimonies of the 1990s appears diluted, if not completely overcome. In contrast, the involvement of Italian fascist collaborators alongside German soldiers as perpetrators of massacres emerges more clearly in the more recent witnesses.