Right under the noses of the many travelers who visit the quaint village of Alberobello to see its famous trulli houses is a relic from a sad chapter in Puglia’s history of which few outsiders are aware. It’s the infamous “Casa Rossa” (“Red House”) a symbol of persecution under the Fascists and the Nazis, who used the site to imprison those considered to be their enemies, including many Italian, German and Eastern European Jews. And after World War II, as Italy moved toward democracy, the house was briefly used to imprison ex-Fascists and other collaborators and criminals.

For years, many people in Puglia fought to have the house preserved as a memorial and museum to those who were persecuted there; one proposal called for it to be established as the “Memorial-Museum of the Shoah (Holocaust) in Southern Italy.” (Constructed early in the 20th century, the house originally served as an agrarian school and later was an orphanage. Beginning in 1947, it was housed female refugees from all over Europe.) The house even has artistic value, as once-imprisoned artists left behind works of art they created in return for food and clothing; most notable of these are frescoes in the house’s chapel.

But now the fate of the Casa Rossa is uncertain, as – now in a state of neglect – it heads to public auction on Friday morning, Nov. 28, with an expected selling price of just over 1 million euros. It is feared that a developer will buy the site and convert it to a hotel or convention center.

Puglia has hotels and convention centers in abundance, spread throughout the region, and plenty of more suitable places to build new ones. At this point, using the Casa Rossa as anything but a memorial to those who suffered there would be a desecration.