Peace Park

In Fornoli, a hamlet of Bagni di Lucca, there is the Peace Park. It is a large green area created with the aim of promoting a culture of peace and solidarity among people. In 2003, the site was chosen by the Tuscany Region as one of the places to remember the Holocaust.

In June 1999, a memorial stone was placed in the park in memory of Liliana Urbach (Bagni di Lucca, 19 October 1942 – Auschwitz, 6 February 1944), daughter of Leo Urbach and Alice Loewy. Her family had been forced to flee Austria due to racial persecution. Liliana was born in Bagni di Lucca, where her family was held in restricted internment as foreign Jews in 1942.

People of Jewish origin in restricted internment were subject to a series of restrictions: they had to remain at a fixed residence and report regularly to the police, were forbidden from listening to the radio, engaging in political activity, interacting with the local population, and leaving the house after sunset and before dawn. After the Armistice, widespread roundups took place across the province of Lucca, leading to the arrest and internment of many Jewish families in the provincial concentration camp of Bagni Caldi. Among those detained were 27 minors under the age of eighteen.

On 23 January 1944, they were transported by truck to Florence and from there to San Vittore prison in Milan, where on 30 January they boarded Convoy No. 6 to Auschwitz. Liliana, not yet two years old, died upon arrival along with her mother. Her father Leo survived the Holocaust.