Asinara and the Great War, an island transformed into a large prison camp came to host over 24 thousand soldiers of the most varied nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian army. This is the theme at the center of the next meeting entitled "Twenty thousand steps in the wind - Beauty and the wind are the only custodians of past lives in its history", scheduled for Friday 10 March at 18 in the conference room of the National Park headquarters Asinara where various speakers will intervene.

During the First World War the island had to face a great emergency which lasted eight months, from December 1915 when the first ships arrived from Valona, Albania, with the first contingents of prisoners, until the summer of 1916, with the departure of 16,000 soldiers transported to France to end up in other concentration camps or sent back to the front to fight alongside the French against their former fellow soldiers.

That of the Austro-Hungarian prisoners was one of the most terrible pages of history, remembered by the various cemeteries scattered around the island and divided by nationality, as well as by documents and photographs on display in the Cala d'Oliva museum. A great effort was made by the Italians to accommodate such a large mass of men at Asinara that until the beginning of hostilities it housed no more than five hundred people: thousands died of disease and starvation.

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