Italian Alpine Club, formal readmission for members expelled in ’38

Nobel laureates such as Franco Modigliani and Emilio Gino Segrè, famous writers like Alberto Moravia, mathematicians of the caliber of Guido Castelnuovo and architects and urbanists of the stature of Bruno Zevi. Many illustrious personalities figure on the list of more than two hundred members from Rome who were expelled from the Italian Alpine Club-CAI after the promulgation of the racial laws by Fascism. Eighty-four years later that infamous ace, the CAI recently has decided to exercise a “formal readmission” of those who were thrown out, presenting this act during an evening at the Jewish Centre “Il Pitigliani”.
This move follows by a few months a motion which was unanimously approved at the last national assembly in Bormio, when the CAI’s delegates agreed on the need for a “path of self-criticism, historical reflection and ethical re-elaboration” on that period and the related responsibilities. “After the war, it was often preferred to forget. The time has now come to remember, acting in the wake of this motion”, this was the reflection posed by Livia Steve from Rome’s CAI, who organized the evening and conducted a biographical research on the number of the purges happened in the Capital, which could grow further.
Among the speakers, the general president of CAI Antonio Montani, the president of the Rome section Giampaolo Cavalieri, UCEI president Noemi Di Segni and the president of the Jewish Community Ruth Dureghello.
In the premise of the CAI’s motion there is a quote by Claudio Magris, according to whom the recovery of Memory should “look forward, taking the past with it to save it and to launch it towards a future which is freed from injustice and oppression”. This comes together with the notion that in Jewish culture forgiveness (teshuvà) “can only be granted by those who directly endured the injustice” and therefore the act performed by the CAI “doesn’t imply any action of forgiveness, being history itself without forgiveness” and “one must deal with that through the respect of Memory”.
In this sense, it is added, “there is the necessity to ‘recover the right path’, accomplishing a complete rediscovery of the truth of Memory, and of a social path of full acceptance of the responsibility of our association in giving continuity to the hateful racial policy enacted during fascism”.

Above, Adachiara Zevi receives her father Bruno’s readmission certificate.

Translated by Laura Cattani and revised by Valentina Megera, students at the Advanced School for Interpreters and Translators of the University of Trieste, interns at the newspaper office of the Union of the Italian Jewish Communities – Pagine Ebraiche.