Museum of Memory and Hospitality

Opened on January 14, 2009, and realized with funding from the Puglia Region, the Museum of Memory and Hospitality in Santa Maria al Bagno reconstructs the events that took place in the seaside town of Nardò between 1943 and 1947.\n\nDuring these years, thousands of Jews who had escaped the Holocaust found refuge here, welcomed with immense solidarity by the locals, to the point that a synagogue and a kibbutz were established.\n\nFrom that time remain three murals painted by one of the camp’s guests, Zvi Miller, now preserved in the museum designed by architect Luca Zevi, where the extraordinary story of the refugees, the murals themselves, and the reception camp (D. P. Camp No. 34) has been recreated.\n\nDocuments, testimonies, and a photographic exhibition also recount moments of joy and conviviality that the Jews experienced before the camp was dismantled and they took to the roads of the world or to the newly emerging State of Israel.