Come riconquistare la memoria: il Vajont, dalla catastrofe all'archivio

Vajont 9 October 1963: disaster. An enormous landslide fell into the valley of the stream Vajont filled with the water contained by a tall dam for hydroelectric production. The wave hit the village of Erto and Casso, it went over the dam and destroyed the village of Longarone. 1910 people died. The magistrature of Belluno opened the investigation, that was concluded in 1968 with the request for the nine accused to stand trial. But the trial was transferred from its natural seat of Belluno, believed not to be fair, to the Court of the city of L’Aquila. The criminal trials were concluded in 1971 with three convictions by the Court of Cassation. The documentation of the trials remained in the Court of L’Aquila until 2008, then it was handed over to the National Archives of L’Aquila. These documents constitute the "Vajont archives". A project of study was formulated. The earthquake that struck L’Aquila on 6th April 2009 spared the archives of Vajont, it imposed nevertheless the need for a temporary transfer of the archives themselves to the National Archives of Belluno, to allow the resumption and the prosecution of the project study. The archive of the Vajont’s trial however, even though it is a single body of papers, constitutes only a part of the documentation necessary for the study of the "Vajont case". The initial programme therefore widens in order to identify a "widespread archive of the Vajont".

Parole chiave:Vajont, disastro, processo, Aquila, Belluno, "archivio diffuso del Vajont".

Maurizio Reberschak, Come riconquistare la memoria: il Vajont, dalla catastrofe all'archivio in "HISTORIA MAGISTRA" 3/2010, pp 123-134, DOI: 10.3280/HM2010-003011