FOM is guided by four core principles:
● Rigorous Documentation — through careful collection, preservation, and verification of historical evidence.
● Historical Truth — through resistance to erasure, denial, and distortion.
● Human Dignity — through honoring individual lives and lived experiences.
● Intergenerational Memory — through the transmission of knowledge across families and communities.
Today, FOM works to:
● Support historical scholarship through collaboration with researchers, universities, archives, and cultural institutions
● Create educational resources that make this history accessible to future generations in Ethiopia, Italy, and throughout the diaspora
● Promote dialogue, reconciliation, and historical understanding through honest engagement with the legacies of fascism, racism, colonial violence, and injustice
A Living Memorial
Among our most important goals is the creation of a permanent memorial on the island of Asinara, honoring the Ethiopian prisoners who lived, suffered, and died there. Developed in partnership with Sardinian institutions and local authorities, this memorial would serve not only as a place of remembrance for descendants and families, but also as a site of education and reflection on the consequences of fascism, racism, colonialism, and historical injustice.
Alongside this, we are developing a permanent and publicly accessible digital archive of documents and testimonies, expanded through educational programming, publications, translations, and scholarly collaborations, so that families and researchers around the world can explore this history and continue to contribute to it.