The post-war period
1945 - 1955The Refugee Camp
Already from 1945, immediately after the end of the war, the first Italian refugees coming from Venezia-Giulia and Dalmatia began to be hosted in the camp. They had fled owing to the tensions that had arisen between Italy and the Yugoslavia of Marshall Tito.
To these were soon added also refugees from the former Italian colonies in Africa, Libya and Ethiopia. Unfortunately the camp, as it had been designed as a structure for the internment of soldiers, was not suited to hosting entire families of refugees who travelled with children or old people. In the huts there was no privacy, the rooms were divided hanging blankets from the ceiling and often the indispensable minimum furniture was lacking.
Servigliano also could not offer great opportunities for work. For this reason the family groups, after a short stay, requested to be transferred to other places, in larger towns where it was possible to find work more easily and better living conditions.
It is estimated that approximately 30.000 refugees were hosted in the Servigliano camp.
In 1955 the last refugees were transferred to Ascoli Piceno. The following year the railway was also put out of service, the camp was definitively closed and left abandoned until the Seventies, when the work on demolishing the huts began, to transform the camp into what is now the “Parco della Pace” (Peace Park).
