The day after, September 8, 1943, the Italian Army Officers' Barracks in Via Corticella, Bologna, was occupied by the Germans and transformed, under a mixed Nazi and Fascist management, into a concentration and sorting camp, first of the Italian soldiers arrested in various parts of the province and then of the civilians rounded up in various regions of northern Italy. Historical sources hypothesize that the Roman carabinieri arrested and deported on October 7, 1943, shortly before the roundup of Roman Jews, also passed through it, because they were considered unreliable by Commander Kappler. In the period May-October 1944 alone, it is estimated that about 36,000 people passed through the Red Barracks. The activity of the camp was abruptly interrupted with a heavy Allied bombing on 12 October 1944.
The picture reconstructed through research, historical experts and the contributions of direct witnesses still alive, make it possible to restore to civil memory the forgotten history of this camp, the scene of a great human tragedy, of people deprived of all rights and destined for labor or extermination camps in northern Europe, or forced labor on the front line in Italy.
A historical path that also unfolds through stories of great solidarity and humanity between the prisoners and those who carried out activities in the camp, first of all the doctor and the priest of the lager, up to the present day, to the discovery of new elements, to the doubts and investigations on the hypotheses of mass shootings and mass graves.