(September 5, 2016) April 23, 1945. The soldiers of the German Wehrmacht shoot 127 Italian military prisoners in a sand quarry in Treuenbrietzen (Brandenburg). The story is portrayed by a film that will be presented Thursday, September 8 (from 19 to 21) at the Italian Institute of Culture in Berlin: it is “In the Brandenburg Sand” (Im Märkischen Sand) by Katalin Ambrus, Nina Mair , Matthias Neumann. Promoted by the IIc in collaboration with Out Of Focus Filmproduktion, the screening will give the public the opportunity to discover a forgotten massacre. After the screening there will be a discussions with the authors. The history of Italian military prisoners in the Second World War has never really found a place in the German and Italian collective memory. Following the capitulation of September 8 1943, and the breaking of the alliance between Rome and Berlin, 650,000 Italian soldiers were deported in German forced labor camps. 50,000 never returned from those places. “In the Brandenburg Sand” tells the story of Italian military prisoners, drawing on the concrete example of forced labor in Brandenburg. (Red)
