Page - 87 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 2/2016

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 2 2o16 Tony Kushner | Lampedusa and the Migrant Crisis 87 until 2013 the Askavusa collective have rescued some of the contents as well as the fragments of boats that now frame Porto M.102 That not all the boats have been removed, however, is a reflection that the local involvement in rescuing and helping migrants has been a key part of Lampedusa’s recent history. Again, the visitor is given no help in identifying them as such, but alongside the larger vessels are several small local fishing boats which were used to rescue migrants – the bravery and decency of the people involved is hauntingly evoked in Lustgarten’s Lampedusa: [The fishermen Stefano and Salvatore] travel back in the breaking dawn. Grey turning orange turning blue. Five live bodies and fifty-seven dead ones. Nobody says a word, each ocean-deep in their own thoughts.103 It is a reflection of the self-contained world of Holocaust studies and the ahistorical tendency in migration studies that there is no linkage made between past and present with these small craft and their sailors. But are they not linked in a special maritime history to the Danish fishing boats used to ferry Jews to safety in Sweden during autumn 1943 which have become iconic in Holocaust representation (on display in Israel, America and Denmark itself)? The semi-managed, semi-anonymous presence of these abandoned boats in the port is mir- rored in the semi-official heritage centre in the main (only) shopping street in Lampedusa 102 On the history of Askavusa and Porto M, see Arnoldo Mondadori, Alfonso Cacciatore and Alessandro Triulzi (eds), Bibba e Corano a Lampedusa (Milan: Editrice La Scuola, 2014), 133-46. 103 Lustgarten, Lampedusa, 30. Fig. 19: Amnesty mural, Photo: Eithne Nightingale