"STÜCK. The Other Resistance": The Story of Italian Military Internees at the Toselli Theater
A double performance in Cuneo features the show inspired by the diary of Centallo military chaplain Don Giuseppe Barbero: one for schools in the morning, and one for the general public in the evening.
On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, the Toselli Theater in Cuneo will host “STÜCK. The Other Resistance,” a theatrical performance dedicated to the story of the Italian Military Internees, soldiers captured by the Germans and deported to Reich prison and labor camps after September 8, 1943.
Two performances are scheduled for the same day: the first at 11:00 a.m., reserved for Cuneo's secondary schools; the second at 8:45 p.m., open to all citizens, with free admission and reservations recommended.
The show, starring Andrea Chiapasco, Marianna Chilà, and Pietro Pellegrino, and directed by Franco Emanuele, is loosely based on the diary " La Croce tra i Reticolati" (The Cross among the Reticulated Bars) by Don Giuseppe Barbero, a priest from Centallo and a military chaplain interned in Germany during World War II. The dramaturgy is by Andrea Chiapasco, Marianna Chilà, Franco Emanuele, and Pietro Pellegrino.
Published in 1946, Don Barbero's diary provides an inside look at the deportation and imprisonment of Italian military internees after the armistice. Captured by their former German allies, Italian soldiers who refused to continue fighting alongside them or to join the Italian Social Republic were classified not as prisoners of war, but as military internees, a designation that allowed the Nazi regime to exempt them from the guarantees provided for prisoners of war and use them as labor.
It is a page of the Second World War that has long remained marginalized in public memory, but it represents one of the forms taken by the Italian Resistance after September 8th: an unarmed resistance, paid for through deportation, hunger, forced labor, and, for many, death far from home.
This story is given voice by Don Barbero's account, which preserves in writing not only the memory of his own experience, but also that of the many men with whom he shared the camps and imprisonment, both the survivors and those who never returned.
The title of the show recalls the German word Stück, “piece”, a term that also evokes the dehumanization produced by the concentration camp system and forced labor, in which individuals risk being reduced to numbers, production units, simple “pieces”.
In both performances, the show will be preceded by a brief historical overview by the Historical Institute of the Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Province of Cuneo, "DL Bianco." Afterward, the actors will meet the audience for a moment of discussion and dialogue.
The initiative is organized by the Historical Institute of the Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Province of Cuneo “DL Bianco” and the Nuto Revelli ETS Foundation, in collaboration with the Centallo Viva ODV Association, and is part of the “Resistances 2026 – Republic and Constitution” calendar and the Cuneo for Peace and Through Memory.
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The Resistance project is organized and coordinated, together with the Municipality of Cuneo, by the lead group APS Lhi Balòs ETS, with the Historical Institute of the Resistance and Contemporary Society in the Province of Cuneo "DL Bianco", the Nuto Revelli ETS Foundation, ANPI ETS - Provincial Committee of Cuneo, ANPI ETS - Cuneo section, the "Ignazio Vian" Partisan Association, the "Don Aldo Benevelli" Cultural Center, ANPPIA - Cuneo section, ANED - Cuneo section, Liberavoce OdV Association - Cuneo Presidium, Noau ETS Cultural Association, and Arcipelago APS.
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Tuesday, September 22, 2026 – Toselli Theater, Cuneo
11:00 a.m.: Performance for secondary schools in Cuneo
8:45 p.m.: Performance open to the public – free admission
Information and reservations:
info@istitutoresistenzacuneo.it
tel. 349 1934153
