This wall of remembrance was erected to celebrate the Resistance in Nazi concentration camps, during an official memorial event held in Carpi and Modena on December 8 and 9, 1955 and marking the tenth anniversary of the Resistance. Urged by some relatives of the victims of the shooting range massacre and by some former deportees, Mayor Bruno Losi promoted this event to remind Italy of all those who were imprisoned in the Fossoli camp in order to be deported to Nazi camps. The participation of national institutions and international delegations is huge, and crowds of citizens take part in the celebrations in Piazza dei Martiri and visit the first national exhibition on the Nazi extermination camps in the courtyard of honour of Palazzo dei Pio.
Among the various initiatives planned by the organizing committee, there is that of leaving in the Fossoli camp a tangible mark in memory of the role it played during the Second World War as the waiting room for the hell of the Nazi extermination camps.
The corner at the crossroads between the Old Camp and the New Camp, which since 1954 has become St. Mark's Village inhabited by the Julian and Dalmatian families who had to leave Istria, is chosen as the spot on which to erect the Wall of Remembrance ; it is a minimalist but solid monument featuring a plaque with a text especially written for the occasion by Piero Calamandrei and an urn containing earth samples from various camps brought by the various European delegations attending the event.
A solemn appeal signed by all the attending foreign delegations seals these two days that will deeply affect the design of the deportation memorial policy in our country hoping that "a word of warning, of faith, of concord from Fossoli, from this land of martyrdom and glory, may reach out to the rest of the world".
