"A common feeling of human solidarity". Childcare in the Italians’ holiday home of Saint-Cergues Les Voirons (1928-1945)

Anti-fascist exiles considered the construction of a building to be used as a summer camp for the children of Italian emigrants in Saint-Cergues Les Voirons, near Geneva, as one of their best undertakings during the years of the dictatorship. Although there are important studies on Italian anti-fascist exiles in Switzerland and France, Italian historiography has so far overlooked this initiative, which has only recently been explored in relation to the salva- tion of Jewish children. As a place of protection from fascist dictatorship, the horrors of the Spanish civil war, the tragedy of the Second World War and the Shoah, the house of Saint- Cergues (inaugurated in 1933) represents a sort of paradigm of the ambivalent history of childhood in the course of the Twentieth century. On the one hand, the home was increas- ingly embedded into armed conflicts and violence, while, on the other hand, it became in- creasingly connected with a growing system of national and international legal protection for children.

Keywords: anti-fascism, Jews, childhood, holiday camps, Geneva, World War II

Fabio Montella, "Un comune sentimento di umana solidarietà". Il soccorso all’infanzia nella casa degli italiani di Saint-Cergues Les Voirons (1928-1945) in "ITALIA CONTEMPORANEA" 302/2023, pp 56-84, DOI: 10.3280/IC2023-302003