Asinara

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Asinara
Cala d'Oliva, the most important inhabited town during the prison era
Cala d'Oliva, the most important inhabited town during the prison era
Waters Mediterranean Sea
Geographical location 41 ° 3 '  N , 8 ° 15'  E Coordinates: 41 ° 3 '  N , 8 ° 15'  E
Asinara (Sardinia)
Asinara
length 17.4 km
width 6.4 km
surface 51.9 km²
Highest elevation Punta Scomunica
408  m slm
Residents 2 (2018)
<1 inh / km²
main place Cala d'Oliva
Map of Asinara Island
Map of Asinara Island

Asinara is an Italian island off Sardinia that belongs to the municipality of Porto Torres in the province of Sassari . It is a national park . Its area is around 52 km² and the coastline is around 110 km. After Sant'Antioco and San Pietro , it is the third largest of the islands off Sardinia and the seventh largest in Italy. A male resident was counted in the 2001 census . In 2018 there were two men who lived here.

history

Chapel built by Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war

From 1885 to 1999, Asinara Island was used as a prison island . Criminals were brought to the island from mainland Italy, much to the displeasure of the Sardinians.

During the First World War, Asinara was a prisoner of war camp for soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army . Most of them were prisoners of war who had been carried along by the Serbian army on their retreat through Montenegro and Albania after the collapse of the Serbian front in late autumn 1915 as a result of the victorious Serbian campaign of the Central Powers . At the beginning of the march there were about 50,000 prisoners. Thousands of them died of cholera on the march .

In the Italian-controlled ports of Durazzo and Valona , the prisoners were finally shipped to Asinara. On the crossing to Asinara another 1,500 prisoners died, so that only about 24,000 got there. The prisoner-of-war camp on Asinara was not prepared for such a number of prisoners. Another 7,000 prisoners died on the island in the first three months. Of the survivors, around 16,000 were handed over to France in July 1916 .

After the end of the First World War, the camp took in another 300 former Austro-Hungarian prisoners of war from Trentino . After their release by the Bolsheviks in Russia, they were detained again on fear of spreading communist propaganda.

During the Abyssinian War in the 1930s, the island was used again as a prisoner of war camp .

Convicted members of the Mafia , including Raffaele Cutolo and Salvatore Riina , were held there until 1997 .

In 1997 the Asinara National Park was opened. A specialty of the island are the leucistic white donkeys , which are under strict protection.

Asinara in literature

  • In the novel Log Book Delta VII from the series Space Partisans by Nikolai von Michalewsky , a base of the Purifying Flame is on Asinara .
  • Asinara may have served as a model for the unnamed prison island in Francesca Melandri's novel Above Sea Level. The novel is set in 1976, you have to translate to it from a large island, and there are also leucist donkeys.

literature

  • Luca Gorgolini: Captivity on Asinara: Austro-Hungarian soldiers of the First World War in Italian custody . Wagner, Innsbruck 2012 ISBN 978-3-7030-0808-5

Web links

Commons : Isola dell'Asinara  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ The order of the almost equally large islands of San Pietro and Asinara is unclear. Depending on the source, the area data for both differ by 2 to 3 km².

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Consultazione dati del 14 ° Censimento Generale della Popolazione e delle Abitazioni ( Italian ) Dawinci.istat.it. Retrieved December 18, 2010.
  2. ↑ Asinara, Sardegna, 2 abitanti (il maresciallo e uno scultore) , May 23, 2018
  3. ↑ Grande Guerra, la vergogna del Lager dell'Asinara. In: ladigetto.it. November 8, 2013, accessed December 7, 2018 (Italian).
  4. ↑ La storia dimenticata dei dannati dell'Asinara. In: strisciarossa.it. August 3, 2018, accessed December 7, 2018 (Italian).
  5. ↑ https://www.links-lesen.de/ueber-meereshoehe/