In a military ceremony today in Lambinowice, south-west Poland, the remains of 60 Italian soldiers who fell in the Second World War were honoured. They were found there during recent excavations of the former German prison camp Stalag 344 Lamsdorf. The solemn event was attended by the Italian Ambassador Luca Franchetti Pardo, together with a delegation from the Defence Culture and Remembrance Office, led by General B. Fulvio Poli, the Italian Military Adjutant in Poland Colonel Stefano Cavalieri, the Honorary Consul of Wroclaw Monika Kwiatosz and Violetta Rezler-Wasilewska, director of the Prisoners of War Museum in Opole, the capital of the region.
"It is an honour to restore the name and dignity of our fallen soldiers, who will thus be able to have a dignified burial," emphasised Franchetti Pardo. During the war, Stalag 344 became one of the largest Nazi prison camps in Europe with prisoners of different nationalities (Soviets, British, Yugoslavs, Poles). After the armistice of September 1943, the Germans disarmed about one million Italian soldiers, of whom (according to estimates) about 70,000 were imprisoned in various oflags and stalags on Polish territory (then under Nazi occupation), including the one in Lambinowice.
The recent exhumation - one of the most significant for Italy in recent years - is the result of a project promoted since 2022 by the Opolee Museum and carried out thanks to the broad participation of historians, archaeologists, forensic doctors, anthropologists and numerous local volunteers.
At the end of today's event, the remains of the fallen Italians were moved to the Italian military cemetery in Bielany in Warsaw.
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