News

During excavation works on the ground of the Old Prisoners-Of-War Cemetery in Łambinowice between 12 and 20 July 2023, invited by the Museum a team of archaeologists headed by Dr. Dawid Kobiałka, discovered an unknown burial place of more than 60 Italian soldiers interned in the Lamsdorf POW camps during World War II.

In the probing dig, the archaeologists found fragments of 16 objects measuring approximately 2 m by 65 cm, forming - as they have so far established - at least four rows. The examination of two of them proved that the recorded structures are burial cavities. At their bottom are human remains preserved in anatomical order. Thanks to a half of an identity tag found next to the remains, with the legible camp number 1064, it was possible to identify one of the buried. He is Giovanni Paravidino, who died on 1 September 1944 at the age of 21.

Giovanni Paravidino was one of the Italian soldiers interned in the Lamsdorf camps. The first of them came there in the second half of 1943. This was caused by the Italian coup of 25 July 1943, as a result of which Benito Mussolini was ousted from power and the new government of Marshal Pietro Bagdolio sided the Allies and declared war on the Third Reich. In response, the Wehrmacht took some 600,000 Italian soldiers prisoner, those who had refused to join its ranks. For propaganda purposes, the Germans referred to them as 'Italian military internees' (IMI), but at the same time placed them in prisoner-of-war camps, which they made into places of extermination for the Italians, as for the Soviet prisoners-of-war.

The discovery was reported to the relevant authorities. The graves have been secured so that the archaeological work could be continued. The museum will endeavour to make this happen next year. The next stage will be to mark and commemorate the found burial site.

This year's archaeological works at Łambinowice are part of the interdisciplinary project 'Science for Society, Society for Science at the Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice', finance by the Ministry of Education and Science, which the Central Museum of Prisoners-of-War is implementing from June 2022 to mid-2024.