Description
Saint-Vincent’s Resistance
Situated along the way to Col de Joux, near the town of Amay, is one of the sites not be missed; the Partisans’ Chapel.
It was built according to the wishes of Commander Edoardo Page who was head of the 17th Matteotti Brigade of the Partisans during the Second World War. After the difficult Armistice of September 1943 and during the years of the Partisan’s struggle for liberation, many young soldiers from Saint-Vincent who fell in battle were buried around the mountain. It was here that Primo Levi, noted witness and custodian of the historical memory of the Holocaust, was also captured by the Germans.
In the immediate vicinity, the burial ground, dating back to 1962, preserves the remains of the partisans. The votive chapel has a large fresco by Luca Bulgarelli titled "Libertà 1961". In 1995, on the occasion of the celebration fo the 50th anniversary of the resistance, a stone was placed commemorating the arrest of Primo Levi, Vanda Maestro and Luciana Nissim, which occurred in Amay on 13 December 1943, and ended with their deportation to Auschwitz. The plaque bears Primo Levi’s poem “If this is a man”.
