“Enhancing the Spirit and Disposition of Camp Inmates:” the Role of Culture in Italian Displaced Persons Camps

Refugees who arrived in Italian Displaced Persons camps in the years immediately following the Second World War were not looking to make Italy their home. But as the wait to immigrate to Palestine grew longer because of increased regulations, the refugees began to look for ways to improve their situation in what had become their indefinite everyday existence. In this spirit, they created schools and theater groups, produced newspapers and radio shows, and engaged in religious services and cultural activities. This paper explores the return of cultural activities such as drama, art, education, sports, and literature to the lives of those in the camps. to do so, it investigates the attitudes and actions of both those on the central organizing committee and those in the camps who received the services provided by the committee. Among the latter group were refugees both from Europe and from North Africa. As such, this paper also examines the potential coexisting tensions and opportunities for cultural sharing this renewal might have caused between North African and European refugees given their divergent backgrounds and traditions. In the end this paper posits that the high priority those in the camps gave to the renewal of cultural life stands in opposition to the notion of these refugee camps as ‘spaces of exception’ or places of ‘bare life.’ In this, it also serves as a corrective to the widespread notion held by many official government and NGO or aid organization workers of refugees as “apathetic” or “lazy.”