Luckily we arrived very early in the morning, so it wasn't super crowded with tourists. Pisa was a very important trade center in the Middle Ages. There are three main buildings- the Duomo, the circular Baptistery, and the Campanile- which is know as the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
We had a short visit and some free time before heading to lunch- an all you can eat pizza meal! We had 4 different pizzas to choose from. The first was pizza margarita- meaning just cheese and sauce.
The second one was funny to me- pizza with hot dogs and french fries as toppings. Apparently hot dogs on pizzas here is pretty big- I have seen it is several pizza shops!
Then it was on to meatballs on pizza....
And finally it was veggie pizza!
It was one of our favorite meals of the entire program!!! For dessert we had sweet fruit cups!
Our next stop was Fossoli- a transit camp during World War II for Italians and others being sentenced to death. In 2012, there was an Earthquake that destroyed most of the buildings.
This camp was a concentration camp in Italy during Hitler's regime. It was first a prisoner of war camp, and then became a Jewish concentration camp. After that, it became a police and transit camp before finally becoming a labor collection center for Germany in 1944. and housed Jews before it became a transit camp for Prisoners of War and police officers. Over 2844 Jews passed through this camp, with 2802 of them being deported.
After visiting the transit camp, we went to the city to see the Deportee Memorial Museum.
This museum opened in 1973, and takes you through 13 various sized rooms where special lighting effects and quotations on the walls create an intense emotional atmosphere. The walls of the rooms are decorated with graffiti of sketches of great artists, as well as exhibits that showcase and document the lives of prisoners that lived at the transit camp.
This was graffiti art in the first room depicting what life was really like in the deportation camps. While I was sitting in the rooms, here are some quotes from the people held captive:
"I shall live the last minutes of my life with pride and courage. I am putting whole mountains, unlived decades into these short minutes during which I want to be the happiest man in the world because my life has ended fighting for the happiness of all Man kind." - Stephan, USSR
"Today they sentenced 7 of us to be shot and the sentence will be carried out in a short while. Nobody is afraid and many are even singing." - Milan, Yugoslavia
"Dear Mummy and all of you, tonight they came to take us to be shot. They called 12 of us, including our Srpce. I imagined that after her they would call me, so I got up and got ready. He stopped, instead, and told those called to go outside. That moment for me was terrible. She got dressed and said: "Bye." We kissed on another in a hurry. She went away looking proud her head held high, as she always does when she walks, my little sister...." - Jovanka, Yugoslavia
As we walked through each room, quotes were written on the walls of Italians' last words to their families and friends. I read each one as we went through (the booklet had the English translations). I cannot express in words the thoughts and feelings that came over me while reading their last words. I cannot imagine the life in which they lived. How could this have happened? This wasn't that long ago! It sickens me to think that people were killed for no good reason. It is essential that we continue to strive to promote peace in our world.
"My dear wife, you don't know how they torture us. They stub out cigarettes on our bare chest, some days, during the interrogations, they pull at our skin with burning hot tongs, they place our fingers on burning-hot irons or pull out our finger nails. The agony is terrible..." - Franc, Yugoslavia
"Today they took 300 to be executed, including seven of ours, chosen in alphabetical order and my turn nearly came..." - Stratos, Greece
"Farewell to the Jewish people! Do not let a similar catastrophe happen ever again." - Gela, Poland
In the hall I read: "You too; You ought to learn to see, not look up in the air. To act, not speak. This monster was once on the verge of ruling the world! He was suppressed by the people, but let us not cry victory too soon:; the womb that bore him is still fertile." by Bertolt Brecht
In the last room, which ends the visit, there are 15,000 names of Italian citizens who were deported into the camps.
The main purpose of the camp and the museum is the exploitation of the historical memory of the Ex Fossoli Camp. It hopes to foster a culture of peace, focusing on human rights and tolerance.
After reflecting on our visit to the camp and the museum, it was time to meet our homestay families! I watched as each student was introduced to his or her family. This is one of the greatest things about the People to People programs- it brings important elements of culture to a student. For the next three days, students will be living with Italian families in their homes and spending time with them doing their daily activities. Unfortunately, there were not enough homestay families, so I am with Randall in a hotel in the city of Parona, right outside of Verona.
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