La sindrome del sopravvissuto. Traumi, associazionismo, memorie dei lager nazisti nell’Italia repubblicana.

The research analyses the psychopathological reactions developed by Italian survivors of the National Socialist concentration camps and the way in which they shaped Italian social security legislation in the Republican era. Starting with a detailed analysis of the medical and sanitary conditions in the camps, the various vicissitudes that led to the codification and clinical recognition of the concentration camp survivor syndrome are reconstructed. The central part analyses the work of the associations of Italian survivors (ANED and ANEI) and the institutional struggles that led between 1960 and 1980 to the recognition of some significant economic compensation for the violence suffered during deportation: the one-off compensation from the Bonn government, the reform of war pension legislation and the institution of a life allowance. Finally, by cross-referencing audiovisual memoirs and corpora of interviews collected in the second half of the 20th century with medical contributions recently published in English-speaking specialist journals, some of the most pervasive psychological and psychosomatic symptoms are analysed.