Support us by buying our books
Bugle Call to Freedom: The PoW Escape from Camp PG 49 Fontanellato 1943
A People’s Courage: Civil resistance in German-occupied Italy Paperback
The Girl with a Peach: Courage and Compassion in Wartime Italy
Escaping has ceased to be a sport – Frank Unwin
To the River: Why would you risk your life and all that you love for a stranger?
Where the Hell Have You Been?: Monty, Italy and One Man’s Incredible Escape
Love and War in the Apennines – Eric Newby
Donate to our work
The Trust is almost entirely run by volunteers and is dependent upon the generosity of its supporters, many of them the descendants of escapers. Donations contribute to the cost of the student bursaries and help finance our other projects.
What your one-off or monthly donations help support
Educational bursaries
Our principal activity is to award four-week English language study bursaries to Italians aged 18 to 25. Since 1989 we have granted more than 700, many of them to descendants of Italians who rescued escapers, although this is not a condition of entry. The Trust pays for tuition at schools in London (Wimbledon) and Oxford (Wheatley) and provides accommodation in family homes assigned by the schools. Students may arrive at a time of their choosing and come from all over Italy but principally from the regions of Le Marche, Emilia-Romagna and Abruzzo, where the largest PoW camps were concentrated.
Research
The Trust has two websites, one of which is an archive containing 200 memoirs by former PoWs. The Trust stimulates research into the Allied presence in wartime Italy by families seeking to discover more about an ancestor’s experience as a PoW, and also by academics. It works closely with the Milan-based Parri Institute and the Italian faculty of Cambridge University and supports the digitisation of Allied Screening Commission files in Washington DC to make them accessible.