The project "Memories of the 'Others'" aimed to bring together young people from Germany and Italy with contemporary witnesses and relatives of groups persecuted during Italian fascism (1922–1945) and the German occupation of Italy (1943–1945), in order to enable an intergenerational examination of the totalitarian past of both countries. At the center of the project was the historical-political education of the participants, aimed at strengthening democratic culture in Europe: through confrontation with the concrete historical reality of persecution, violence, and resistance, we sought to sharpen their sensitivity to the value of open, democratic societies based on the rule of law, and to shape them into active, engaged citizens who are aware of the ongoing importance of civic courage and political participation. A central concern was to enable a German-Italian engagement with persecution and crimes with a specific focus on Italy — a dimension that remains largely unknown in Germany outside expert circles, and which even in Italy itself is often addressed only by a committed minority. Through conversations with contemporary witnesses and relatives of victims, visits to memorial sites and museums, expert lectures, and guided tours of historically significant locations in Rome, participants gained direct, experience-based access to this history that went beyond purely text-based knowledge. This combination of methods was intended to create a lasting, emotionally anchored understanding of the past that achieves an effect going beyond the mere acquisition of historical facts. Alongside intensive engagement with German crimes, we also aimed to create a clearer understanding of the scope and extent of Italian victims on the one hand, and of Italian participation in crimes on the other — aspects that are sometimes overlooked or insufficiently addressed in public discourse in both Germany and Italy, such as the involvement of Italians in war crimes, the persecution of Jews, the fate of Italian military internees, or the criminal prosecution of war crimes. Finally, the project pursued the goal of making visible the diversity of victim groups persecuted by the fascist and National Socialist regimes, whose stories have often been marginalized or obscured through silence and shame — hence also the plural in the title "Memories": the Jewish community and the Shoah in Italy, Roma and Sinti, homosexual people, political dissidents, partisans, as well as civilian victims of massacres such as those at the Fosse Ardeatine and in Civitella. Through engagement with these diverse, overlapping histories of persecution, the German and Italian participants developed a more nuanced understanding of their shared and distinct pasts, while at the same time drawing connections to present-day forms of discrimination and exclusion — entirely in keeping with the overarching project goal of strengthening European democratic values among young people in both countries. The project set itself the following goals: to promote intercultural learning and understanding between young people from Germany and Italy with regard to the totalitarian past of their countries, to create an exchange of experiences and perspectives between the young and old generations with regard to the persecution during Nazi-Fascism in Italy, including its digital preservation and distribution, raising awareness of discrimination and marginalisation in the present and sensitising people to the value of open democratic societies based on the principles of the rule of law, Testing and establishing youth encounters as a project format at Villa Vigoni and expanding our own German-Italian youth network.